In this post:
- strengthen your core with this ball exercise.
- how to keep from overusing the hip flexors in the reverse crunch.
Author: Nick Ortego is the owner of N 2 Action, a wellness studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offering personal training, health coaching, yoga, and assisted stretching.
Also find more on the Nick Ortego Fitness YouTube Channel
Video Transcript:
Hey it’s Nick Ortego here. I’m gonna
show you how to use this ball to do an
abdominal exercise. It’s called the
reverse crunch it’s mainly the rectus
abdominus and some of the oblique
muscles. What I like about the reverse
crunches it hits all those muscles. It
gets you moving the pelvis rather than
the thoracic spine. So many people are
already stuck in a position for too many
hours of thoracic flexion, whether
they’re sitting and driving or sitting
at work, doing desk work. So I always like
to avoid reinforcing that for a lot of
people when I can. This is what I like to
do. Pop the legs up on the ball and then
press the heels into the ball. Squeeze the ball between the heels and
the butt like this. So that you can
actually pick up the ball. Arms down
by the sides.
Take a breath in. Exhale and then curl
the pelvis under. What the ball does is
it locks the legs in place. This keeps you
from doing a leg swing where you’re
accomplishing the movement by the
momentum of the hip flexors. Give that a
try it will activate the hamstring, which
can potentially shut the hip flexors off
a little bit more getting you to work on
the ABS a lot more with that reverse
crunch movement. If you got any benefit
from this, leave a comment below. And if
you’d like to get more content that’s
not available on the blog or the regular
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N 2 Action 