By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
The thought of having to do an additional 20-30 minutes of
abdominal work after a regular workout can sometimes be enough for
you to skip the ab training altogether. But, with these six upper
body exercises, you'll gain all the benefits and more of a regular
ab workout, without the extra time.
This 15-minute upper body workout will not only build your arms,
your chest, and your back, but every one of these exercises is also
going to work your abdominals.
So this workout will include as I mentioned 6 exercises, but they
will be broken down into 3 supersets at 5 minutes each.
So, the first superset will pair chin-ups with spiderman pushups.
Now, just because these aren't specific abdominal exercises don't
think your abs will walk away unscathed. I remember training a
client before and a couple of days after doing the chinup exercise
she commented how shocked she was that her abs were so sore.
With proper form, the chin-up exercise can very powerfully target
your abs.
For proper form, begin in the dead hang position. Now, keeping your
body tight, brace your abs and pull your body up and chin over the
bar, then in a controlled fashion, lower your body down. You will
noticeably feel this exercise working your lats and your biceps.
Perform enough repetitions that take you until one short of
failure. For example, if you can do 15 repetitions, then only do 14
and so on.
After the chin-up exercise, you will move into the spiderman
pushup. In this exercise, you will get into a regular pushup
position, and then as you come down bring your knee up to your
elbow and back down. Alternate sides.
As previously noted, each superset pairing will be done in five
minute intervals. Once finished with the first superset, move onto
the next upper body combination of one-arm standing dumbbell
shoulder press and heavy weighted dumbbell rows.
For the one-armed shoulder press exercise, place the DB at shoulder
height with your palm facing outward. Next, brace your abs and
place your opposite hand on your side to ensure your obliques are
working while pressing up with the DB. Do eight repetitions for one
side, and then switch to the other side.
Immediately after completing your repetitions for the shoulder
press, move to DB rows. This time you will choose a weight you can
normally do 10 times, but now try to get 12 repetitions. However,
be sure to use only good form.
By keeping your body and back in a straight position, you will end
up working your abdominals very hard, especially as you get closer
to failure and your obliques work against rotation. If you find
that you need to take a 5-10 second rest after ten repetitions in
order to use perfect form for the remaining two, then do that.
Again, you will do this superset for five minutes going back and
forth between these two exercises.
To finish off the 15-minute workout, you'll do two arm exercises
that simultaneously work your abdominals. The first exercise is the
lying dumbbell triceps extension. Now, in order to get a good ab
workout from this exercise, when you're at the bottom position,
drop a little more and you stretch your abs. Then, bring the
dumbbells back up overhead and repeat.
That little extra stretch at the bottom of the exercise will really
work your abdominals to give you that six pack abs look, much like
the stability ball rollout when you stretch out at the end of that
exercise.
The final exercise is the one-armed standing dumbbell curl. For
this exercise you want to begin in a braced position. Since you
will be using a heavy weight, your abs will have to work very hard
throughout this exercise. To get in proper position, if your right
arm is working, then your left leg will be in front. You can do
this exercise for 6-8 repetitions per side.
That's the 15-minute upper body workout that will work your abs
just as hard if not harder than any ab crunching workout you could
possibly do.
For DVD workouts using these exercises please visit:
=> Click Here for more info!!!
