10 Ab-Sculpting Exercises

We all want it - that lean midsection with an enviable 6 pack.  I'm still working on mine, and here are the exercises I'm using to get there:

1. Your basic crunch - lay on your back with your feet flat on the floor and knees bent at 90 degrees.  Put both hands flat on your belly and contract your abs so that you're lifting your shoulders 3-4 inches off the floor.  Hold it for a second and relax.  Repeat this for 3 sets of 20 reps.
2. Raised leg crunches - same as above, but rest your feet on a bench, chair, or exercise ball.  Feel the burn!
3. Crossover crunches - from the same position as the basic crunch, put your right hand behind your head.  Without pulling on your neck, crunch until your right elbow touches your left knee.  It's optional if you want to raise your knee to meet your elbow halfway.  Do 20 reps per side for 3 sets.
4. Bicycle crunches - similar to the crossover crunch, rather than starting with your feet on the floor, start with your feet about 18 inches from the floor.  At the start of the exercise, your body will basically be 'V' shaped.  With your hands behind your head, draw one knee back and bring the opposite elbow across to meet it.  Touch the two in the middle, return to the starting point and go again with the opposite elbow/knee.  Do 40 reps total (20 per side) for 3 sets.
5. Seated leg raises - sit on the very edge of a flat weight bench or a chair.  Lean back slightly and grip the bench.  With your knees slightly bent, use your abs to draw your knees to your chest.  Contract the lower abs by curling your hips upward at the top of the motion.  Hold it there for a second, lower your legs to the starting point and repeat for 3 sets 20 reps.  A more difficult version of this exercise is to keep your legs straight while performing the motion.
6. Rows - it's a combination between a situp and a leg raise.  Starting from a situp position on the floor, bring your knees toward your chest as you sit up.  Tighten your abs in the middle of the exercise.  Lower yourself to a near-flat position (without touching the floor with your knees or your back) and repeat for 20 reps.  Throughout this execise, the only part of your body that should touch the floor is your bottom.  3 sets of these with 1 minute rest between each set.
7. Planks - you'll love these for their effectiveness.  Lay on your stomach as if you were getting ready to do a push up.  Instead of extending all the way into a pushup, rest on your elbows such that the only parts of your body that are touching the floor are your toes, elbows, and forearms.  Keep your body straight (i.e. don't bend at the hips up or down) and hold this position for 30-60 seconds.  Keep those abs tight the entire time!  Do 3 of these with 1 minute rest in between.
8. Side Planks - similar to the regular plank, this exercise works the obliques.  Lay on your side and lift yourself into position.  For this exercise, the only parts of your body that should touch the floor are your elbow/forearm and the outside of one foot.  Repeat on left and right sides 3 times.
9. Inverted Planks - Instead of facing the floor, you'll be looking at the ceiling with these.  Recline back until your forearms/elbows are on the floor.  Lift your hips until your body is perfectly flat.  Only your forearms and heels are touching the floor.  Hold this position for 30 - 60 seconds.  Do it 3 times.
10. Hanging leg raises - This has become my favorite abdominal exercise.  You can hang from a pullup bar or any other sturdy structure.  I personally use hanging straps designed for this exercise in my gym.  While hanging by your hands from a well-supported structure, raise your unbent legs slightly higher than horizontal and slowly lower them back to the starting position.  12-15 of these for 3 sets should be enough to make you burn!

TIP: Don't do ALL of these exercise in one workout!  Pick 2 or 3 and do them for a few weeks before changing to something different for a few weeks.

See you on the beach!  Be well!!

The site it is a changin'!

New progress in my fitness life is translating to new progress in weightingon40.com.  Alice, my darling wife, has started writing for the website and will be adding content to the Weightingon40 for Women page.  Any of you, dear readers, who happen to be of the fairer gender will be pleased to know that Alice knows her stuff - and she practices what she preaches (she's at the gym RIGHT NOW doing a lower body workout!).  She has a perspective on training and fitness for you ladies that I just can't bring to the table as a man.  Keep checking back for more content!

In addition to Alice's contributions to the site, we have started doing reviews of various fitness related products and services.  So far I have added 2 reviews - one of a magazine and another of a cereal - with plenty more to come!  If you have any products you'd like to see reviewed, just shoot me a message or leave a comment.  I'll get on it as soon as I can!

Look out for my training video series - completely free of charge - that will demonstrate easy home workout ideas for those readers without a gym membership.  Training doesn't need to take place exclusively in the gym; if you own a sturdy wood chair, you can get a home workout that easily rivals the best weight training session you'll find in a gym!

Finally, I'll soon be creating a dedicated Recipes page where users can print healthy and nutritious recipes for cooking at home.  Eating well has never been easier - and I'm making it as easy as I can for you all here at Weightingon40.com!

Be well!

Coming soon...

Coming soon to you on Wo40.com - Wo40 for Women!  My wife, Alice, who is a great example of what happens when a woman trains with weights and engages in cardiovascular exercise, will be putting together a series of articles and blogs that specifically address issues related to women's health and fitness.  Among her subject titles will be:

• Training while pregnant
• Women and weights
• Couples training
• PMS and weight training
• Shopping for clean eating
• And much more!

I'll be putting Alice's bio, including her photo, in the "About Me" page, which will be renamed "About Us".  She trains with me and works hard on maintaining and improving her physique.  I know her information will be second to none.

Look for all kinds of cool new stuff coming soon to Wo40.  The best is yet to come!

Be well!

You've got to BREATHE!

I work in a school. Every morning during the last couple weeks of school, I would pass the gym on the way to the main office and see a couple of coworkers walking laps in the gymnasium. Let me be the first to say that I admire the fact that they are willing to do something beyond the scope of the day-to-day in what appears to be a quest for better health.

The point of the matter, however, is this: in order to burn any significant amount of fat, there has to be a substance present that will stoke the fire of the metabolism. Just walking around a gym, while better than nothing at all, doesn't generate enough intake of this necessary fat-eliminating substance.

That substance is oxygen.

Studies have shown that just breathing deeply is enough to start the process of burning calories. The act of sitting in a chair and breathing deeply for 10 minutes will burn more calories than sitting in the chair and breathing normally. Aerobic exercise, in addition to raising oxygen uptake, raises the metabolism in order to speed more oxygen to the extremities.

Now, I could go into a lot of technical discussion about the interaction of oxygen with references to ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and such, but I don't think it really matters that you know the specific details about HOW oxygen works. I don't know HOW my car works, for example, but I'm pretty glad that I can drive it from home to the gym. So let's forget the details and just understand the relevant points - oxygen helps burn fat, and aerobic exercise permits effective oxygen uptake.

Proper breathing is a reason that practitioners of such activities as Yoga and Tai Chi are usually such lean individuals. The focal aspect of Yoga and Tai Chi training is breathing. Breathing = more oxygen.

Sustained activity that generates sufficient oxygen uptake, whether it be deep breathing or cardiovascular exercise, is a requirement for fat burning.
If you're fairly new to the world of exercise and fitness, understand this simple point: walking casually around the gym is nice, but it's likely not going to have the desired result of trimming body fat. If the lean and strong look is what you desire, running suicides on the basketball court will really make a body seriously breathe.

And that is a plan for success.

Be well!

Giving Back

I have a friend. He's a pretty big guy. We were talking the other day while my son was in his karate class. He was considering joining the gym where my wife and I train. He was asking me a few questions about the equipment, the staff, and such. One of his questions was about the cost for personal training. I told him that I didn't know, because I had never used the training staff at our gym. Beyond that point, I told him 2 very important things:

1) I told him about weightingon40.com (in addition to Transformation.com, which has been a huge help for me) and the wealth of information and encouragement a person can receive from this website, and

2) I told him that I would help him without charging him a cent.

We made arrangements to work out together. That was Friday.

Today, we met at the gym and took in a pretty solid upper body workout. He was puffing like a locomotive, but handled the workout like a champ. I think he said it was the first time he'd worked out in a gym in nearly 20 years.

I'm going to encourage him to take some before shots to start tracking his progress.  There's something about being able to have a point of reference to compare current condition to past condition.

What really felt good was being able to help a guy that wants to make a change get started down the path to fitness and overall health. We're getting together tomorrow morning for a 25 minute HIIT session. I look forward to the opportunityto help him further. I'll keep up with his progress as I blog about it here.

Let's hear it for my friend, Russ, who took the first step today towards reclaiming his health!