Health Tip #2 – Work Your Abs, Not Your Neck

If you’re trying to build muscle and lose fat in your abdominal area, then you need to make sure the power is coming from your abs during the workout.

This may sound obvious but many people make the mistake of doing the workout wrong.

This is especially the case during sit-ups or crunches. Even if you start out by lifting with your abs, you often start to slack on your form as the muscles start to feel the burn.

Many people will start straining their neck to propel themselves upward in order to try and take some of the strain off of their stomach.

But this is counterproductive. The strain should be on your abs. That’s the muscle group you want to work on when you’re doing sit-ups or crunches.

Straining your neck isn’t going to help you burn fat in the belly. Plus, it’s going to put you at risk for causing serious damage to the muscles in your neck.

So, when you are doing your workouts, make sure that you pay attention to your form and movement throughout the exercise.

When doing sit ups, for example, you want the movement to be coming from the waist. Your lower back and abdomen should be doing all the work while your upper body is just following through.

Keep your mind focused on your core. Try to visualize the muscles that are working to accomplish the move and focus on using only those muscles for each repetition of the workout.

Go at a steady pace through each repetition. If you speed through them too quickly because you’re just trying to get it over with, you’ll have a harder time maintaining form.

So instead, slow it down and really focus on becoming aware of your body and the way each muscle is flexing and working together to complete a full repetition.

This doesn’t mean you should go at a snail’s pace and take breaks between repetitions. Instead, just focus on your form and your muscles and making sure that you are doing each repetition flawlessly. Don’t worry about how quickly or slowly you finish a full set of repetitions.

As you get better, you’ll be able to go at a faster speed but the speed is not important here. It’s about the quality of each repetition, not how fast you can get through them all or how many you can do in a single minute.

You’ll get more out of a workout session if you do fewer repetitions but do them all properly.