Keep your legs together and slightly less than stretched for now. Lie down on your back, preferably on a soft surface.Take the following steps to do two windshield wipers: That being said, advanced individuals can wear ankle weights to make air cycling even harder. If you really move your hips, the body weight version will likely be challenging enough. This exercise resembles doing sideways high knees in the captain’s chair.Ī movement like that works your abs to move your hips up, your oblique muscles to turn your hips, and your hip flexors to raise your thighs. Repeat the same movement with the knee on the other side.Let your lower legs hang down throughout the exercise. You definitely want to move your hips if you are interested in working your core muscles. Raise one knee upward to the chest on the other side as far as comfortable.After that, take the following steps to air cycle: First of all, put yourself in the standard captain’s chair position. These often make great alternatives to crunches. More specifically, that means there are many ab exercises on the captain’s chair. This position is great for movements where you want to be able to move your hips and legs to work different muscles. The captain’s chair is an ab gym machine that comes down to a construction where your legs hang freely while you keep yourself in position with your arms on pads. Lying leg raises still work your ab muscles but because you are moving your hips instead of your shoulders, the movement will focus more on the lower muscle fibers.Īdditionally, some people will find lying leg raises more comfortable on their lower backs than crunches. Slowly curl down your body again until you are back in the position of step 1.Start by raising only your shoulders and continue lifting parts of your spine off the ground. Gradually curl up your upper body until your chest is close to your knees.

Put your feet flat on the ground in front of your butt. Take the following steps to do this exercise: Sit-ups are one of the most popular core exercises so it may not be a surprising addition to a list of crunch alternatives. The exercises below can help you build ab muscle but are not great for fat loss. One thing to note before going into the examples is that targeting fat loss in significant amounts is generally not possible. The crunch alternatives below can help with these things. Some people find crunches uncomfortable on their backs, want to focus on different parts of their abs, or simply want to train more different muscles at the same time. However, that does not mean crunches are the only way to do this. Some of the benefits of crunches include that they are great for growing and strengthening your abs and making them stand out more visually. You can also consider alternatives with similar results. Again planks are useless.Crunches can be a great addition to your exercise routine to isolate your abs. Start off by doing 1x8 for each exercise in circuit then 2x8 then 3x8 once you hit 3x8 start adding reps when you get up to 12 add weight and drop reps back down to 8 and work up to 12 and go from there. Also when from the knees gets easy do from your feet.ĭb tilts: only hold one dumbbell at a time, I don't understand when people hold two makes no sense the other one just acts as a counter balance. Hanging leg raises: start by just tucking the knees then move up to feet out parallel then feet to hand when you hit 12 reps on one variation move to next variation at lower repsĪb wheel: planks are a waste of time they don't challenge you nearly as much and you get more stimulation on the core from squatting and deadlifting then planks. The circuit recommended in 5,3,1 is by far the simplest and most effective.ĭecline crunch: add weight when you can do three sets of 12 perfect and hold that shit behind your head holding weight on your chest does basically nothing. See the Related Subreddits section for other popular fitness-related subreddits.General Posting Guidelines (click for more info): No Questions Related to Injury, Pain, or Any Medical Topic Progress Posts Must Be Detailed and Useful Posts Must Be Specific to Physical Fitness and Promote Useful Discussion No Threads That Are Answered by the Wiki, Searching Threads, or Google Welcome to r/Fitness! Click Here for a one-stop shop of our most important resources.

Cable crunch substitute