How to do abdominal crunch exercises

This is an animated body sculpting tutorial for abdominal crunch exercises. Use the controls to pause, slow down and follow along with detailed step-by-step text instructions that match up with each movement. This instructional fitness body building video is incredibly in depth and a great guide for learning abdominal crunch exercises.

How to do the Abdominal Crunch

In this lesson you will learn how to do a proper abdominal crunch. The crunch is an abdominal exercise that can be done without any equipment. Just let your feet rest on your bed or a bench and crunch up your chest. The animation above illustrates the exercise. Use the right arrow button to see a detailed description.

Description: Abdominal Crunch

* Put your feet on a bench, a bed or anything shin height. Support your neck with your hands but don't use them to create momentum. When you crunch, your lower back should stay on the floor. At the beginning, your shoulder blades can touch the floor slightly, but your neck has to stay away from the ground. Keep your back round during the whole exercise (don't hollow).
* Roll forward up your trunk (crunch) and contract your abs. Don't help with your arms.
* Then move back down, until your shoulder blades touch the floor slightly. If your abs lose contraction, you already moved too far.

Trainer advice: How to Crunch

* If you can do more then 35 repetitions, you are probably not concentrating on the movement enough. You either move too fast, hollow your back or help with your arms.
* To make the crunch harder, lift your legs from the bench after the last repetition (hold the legs in the air and keep your back round) approximately 5 seconds.
* To make the whole thing even harder again, extend your legs (appr. 5 seconds).
* And the toughest ending for the crunch would be if your extend your arms behind your head and your legs in front of you. The further the distance between hands and feet while keeping the back round, the harder.