"Cable Crunches" for abs.
"Cable Crunches are great for ab development because it's a really foundational movement and different than most other ab exercises. You can use a lot of resistance and not bother your lower back. It works best with shorter guys (I'm 5'8") or women because you need to be able to stretch your torso out on the lat pulley and still be supporting the weight.
I do this on the seated lat pulldown with about 200-210 lbs and a wide bar. I like the parallel grip lat bar. A wider grip will help with this if you're a little taller. If you're too tall you'll go too slack at the top of the rep or just do half rep.
1) make sure you have a really solid seating with your knees locked firmly under the knee pads. You can push up with your toes to lock yourself in position because
you want all the movements from the abs only.
2) Since you're doing a lot of a weight and maybe a lot of reps, you want a really solid, comfy grip on the handle. I like
Big Backs, of course, but whatever floats your boat. Just make sure you can get those extra reps and stay focused on your abs and not your slippery palms.
3) execute your ab crunches, using
only your ab muscles to pull the bar down as far as you can and hold it for the crunch; then let your abs out in a slow controlled manner and go ALMOST to full stretch. Don't go completely slack.
4) You can go straight down the middle or do left/right alternates or full left and right sets.
There is another really unique kind of leg raise i'd love to share, but it's hard to explain verbally. Maybe I'll get some video.
www.BigBackGrips.com
