RIO Fitness Chicago® Exercise & Nutrition Blog

RIO Fitness Chicago® Tip:

There are two principles when doing abdominal exercising, breathing & keeping your abs tight.

If you're inhaling/exhaling at the wrong time, you're constricting the muscle at the wrong time, which isn't working it. You need to exhale at the contraction. For example, oblique side bends you exhale when you're bent, lower ab straight leg raises you exhale when your legs come toward you, upper ab crunches you exhale when you're going up into the crunch.

If you don't keep your abs tight when you do ab exercises they will develop & always stick out. Since we all want a nice FLAT firm tummy, that's a bad thing. To avoid that, you need to keep the abdominal muscles pulled in toward your spine. That does NOT mean holding your breath! Practice keeping your abs tight right now by repeatedly saying "Ssshhhh," like you're telling somebody to be quiet. It takes some getting used to, but you'll get it.