Getting Fast Abs Using only Crunches

Firstly let me make it clear that you should not read nor believe everything anyone has ever written about getting your 6 pack abs fast. It is important to check the information using many good sources.

Be careful about people talking about situps as the best abs exercise for fast abs.  Rubbish.  Situps is close but not the best abs exercise. There are other exercises for abs that can pass as the best abs exercise.  We will cover the other exercises for abs in more detail at a later stage. 

WRONG WAY TO DO CRUNCHES :- Do not do crunches (another name for sit ups) with straight legs.  Doing so is very dangerous for your back and you might risk getting yourself seriously injured. 

I prefer doing several exercises to get a complete ab workout for my midsection but that's me.  You also cannot go wrong if you prefer crunches only. 

Here is an easy way to get fast abs using crunches :-

EXERCISE AREA

Find a soft surface that is neither too soft nor too hard on your back. I normally use a large towel folded several times to prevent my back from hitting the hard gym floor.

POSITIONING - LEGS

Bend your knees keeping both feet on the floor about a shoulder width apart.  Or, you can put your legs on a small wooden box and raise them several centimeters off the floor.  How far off the floor?  Make it high enough such that your lower legs (below the knees) are parallel to the floor or close enough.

POSITIONING - ARMS 

ARMS POSITION 1 :- Cross your hands in front of you by touching the fingers of one hand to the opposite shoulder. 

ARMS POSITION 2 :- Position your hands together and lightly touch your chin.  You can interlock the fingers together or keep them apart it doesn't matter.

ARMS POSITION 3 :- Touch your right hand to your right ear, left hand to left ear.  Both hands should be touching the ears lightly. 

ARMS POSITION 4 :- Put your hands behind your head but don't grasp then tightly.  Just touch your palms to the back of your head with the finger tips touching each other.  If your hands are positioned behind the head, do not allow your hands to pull your head forward so the chin is touching the chest area.  This is the wrong and an unsafe way of doing it.

ARMS POSITION 5 :- Just leave your arms by your side and do not attempt to use them to lift up your upper body.

STARTING POSITION

To get into a starting position, lie on your back and slowly curl your upper body around the waist and lift it just off the floor.  Do not allow your upper body to touch the floor.  You should feel some tension around your midsection but not too much.

If you feel too much tension, then you are raising your upper torso too far - take it back down closer to the floor.  This will be your starting crunch position for fast abs.  This is where you come back to when completing a rep.

HALF WAY POSITION

To perform one repetition, continue to curl up your stomach as if you are curling into a ball but only until your upper body is about 40 to 50 degrees angle with the floor.

If you are more than 50 degrees, then you are too high in which case your hip flexor muscles will be working.  This will also reduce the tension placed on your abdominals which will not help build fast abs.

When you reach the top of the movement, which is your halfway point, you should feel a lot of tension around the whole frontal muscles including some deeper ab muscles.  This is the half way position.

From here, hold for around 2-5 seconds and tense your muscles as hard as you can.  After holding, go back down slowly to the starting position to complete one repetition. 

Continue until failure or until you feel too uncomfortable or too sore to continue.  Keep track of your repetitions and perform about 3 to 4 sets to get a good workout for your abdominals.  If you can only manage 2 sets then that's okay.  Track your progress and keep a log of all the sets and reps you did.  After one or 2 weeks, gradually increase the number of reps or sets that you do. 

Progressiively overloading your ab muscles over time and keeping the intensity high during workouts, is the key to obtaining fast abs.

Very important that you focus your mind and thoughts on the ab muscles throughout the movement.  Focus on them and contract them at the right position which is the halfway point. 

The iimportant thing is how many reps you have done correctly in good form and how badly you have stressed your ab muscles.

VARIATIONS 

If the positions described above are difficult for you, then do the following.  Stretch your hands out in front of you so it's directly at around 90 degrees to the floor.  Curl up your upper body into the halfway point until the wrists touches the top of the knees.  When the wrists touched the top of the knees, tense your ab muscles, hold for 2 - 5 seconds, then go back down to the starting position.  Keep this position until you are able to do it with your hands behind the head.

If you find that the crunches are too easy, put some 5kg or 10kg weights on top of your chest and hold them there with your hands.

What I also like to do is to use the back of the head positioning for my arms, then when I am close to the top of the crunch or the midday point, I twist my torso so the elbow of my right arm touches my left knee.  The next time I came back up to halfway point, I did the same thing with the other hand.

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