08/07/2014
Hello everyone,
just some info about exercising/training your abdominal muscles (abs).
Studies indicate that there is no difference in training your " upper" or "lower" abdominal muscles. The re**us abdominis is one long muscle with several tendinous inscriptions (marks or lines) separating portions of the muscle, so that when seen on a well muscled, lean body, we see the so called "six pack". That said, there is no evidence that portions of this muscle act independently when exercising. Therefore EMG studies indicate that you cannot exercise the "upper" and "lower " abs. All flexion exercises will exercise the whole muscle ( curl ups, sit ups, crunches [same thing as curl ups] ,reverse curl ups, scissors, bicycle, frog curl ups, leg lowers, jack knifes, lean backs, abd roller, crunch machines, etc) .
That said, many people "feel" these exercises in different areas of the abdominal muscle wall. It has been speculated that when feeling the motion in the "lower" abs, this may actually be due to feeling more muscle activity in the hip flexor muscles or quadratus lumborum (a pelvic muscle responsible for hip hiking). No one is really sure.
There may someday be evidence to explain why we feel these abdominal exercises in different areas of the muscle, or to refute the current evidence.
Either way, my advice is to perform a variety of abdominal muscle exercises to target the whole muscle, activate as many muscle fibers as possible (no single exercise will activate ALL the muscle fibers of any given muscle), and enjoy feeling the muscle tension in different areas regardless of cause. Do as many different abdominal muscle exercises as you can or want to, as long as you perform them correctly and safely
Also, do not forget to exercise the oblique muscles (the abdominal muscles that laterally flex and rotate the spine). These muscles are exercised through rotating and side bending motions.
Happy Exercising !!
