How to Target Your Lower Abs

So, do you have a two pack or maybe even a four pack, but no matter what you do,

your lower abdominal region just looks like crap? Well, guess what, you can do something

about it today, you can actually target this area effectively if you use the right exercises. You

see, lucky for us, a lot of research has been done that actually shows that you can more favorably

activate the lower abdominal fibers over the upper abdominal fibers based upon the exercises that

you're doing. And what we're basically talking about is utilizing the bottom up movements rather

than the top down. When you start to initiate an ab exercise like a crunch that starts from the

top, moving your chest down towards your pelvis, that's a top down movement.

But on the other hand, if you can choose exercises that start by moving your lower

half up towards your chest, that's a bottom up movement. And you can see that these fibers will

initiate that contraction so we can do something about it. But now, because I care about you,

we're going to have to have the all-important public service announcement. You know, the one

where I tell you there are limits to your ability to target. While the exercises that you choose can

more effectively target the lower abdominal region, you're never going to be able to use

these exercises to target a specific area of fat. You know, the one that you're carrying down there,

no matter which exercises you're doing or even how many of them you are doing,

you're not going to be able to undo the Haagen-Dazs and ring dings you just ate.

Now that being said, can we talk about the exercises? Because if you do these,

they're going to help. And the first exercise up is actually a variation of a basic reverse crunch,

you've probably done it before. But pay attention because there's three things you need to make sure

you get right. The first thing is you've got to flatten that back out because what that's doing

is creating a posterior pelvic tilt, which is going to activate those lower abdominal muscles.

If you have the ability to slide your hands under your back, you've got too much of an

anterior tilt and you've already negated some of the benefits of the exercise. So, your

goal should be to not be able to fit your hands under your back if you've done this right.

The second thing you need to do is set the angle of your legs. Ideally,

you could do this with a 90-degree bend of your knees in a 90-degree bend at your hips.

Now, if you want to make this a little bit more challenging, you would just simply extend the legs

a little bit further out so you have more weight to lift or you just bring your knees a little bit

closer to your chest. But the key is once you establish whatever angle you're going to use,

you need to keep it there and then move the pelvis and the legs together as one unit.

You see a lot of people do this wrong. They just simply start to swing their legs up and down

and all they're doing is overworking the hip flexors. As you can see here, that's not the

role of the abdominal muscles. You want to be able to curl the pelvis back towards your chest

and let the legs go along for the ride. And not just have the legs drive up and down,

which over activates that hip flexor and can oftentimes lead to back pain. Now, the variation I

like to use on this exercise is one that actually gives you some feedback to let you know you're

doing it right. And we call it the Swiper. So, all you have to do is set that angle, again,

based on your ability level and then move the pelvis backwards towards your head. And you want

to be able to do it long enough that you can swipe your hands underneath, touch each other, and come

back out to your sides. This is going to delay the time that it takes you to do the exercise,

increasing the time under tension and making those muscles work even harder

if you're just beginning, go a little bit faster with the hand swipe. But if you're more advanced,

try to deliberate a little bit more by going slower and making your abs do more work.

Exercise number two is another one you probably tried before, maybe done a lot of,

but not like this. And that's the big difference. You see, you might call these Seated Knee Tucks,

but you want to think of them differently because you're not just trying to tuck your knees towards

your chest. Instead, think of it like you're going to lift your tailbone off of the ground

and the knees should go much higher. Try to think of them going almost as high as your forehead,

even if they can't reach. The point is you're looking to create that same posterior pelvic tilt

because that's what's going to engage those lower abs. And if you could get this right,

the exercise becomes a lot more effective.

If you don't, you just continue to pull those knees towards your chest. Once again,

you're just over activating the hip flexors, which is just going to lead to probably lower back pain,

but not help you to target the lower abs like you're trying to get the tailbone up on every

rep and I promise you better results will come. And speaking of results, if you haven't gone to

have to do is take our quick program selector and I'll find you the program that matches

your goals. Now, back to the exercises. You're wearing the wrong shirt, Chief.

Oh. And that exercise number three is a variation of a Plank. You guys know how I feel about

traditional standard planks. But this is way better because it's way more effective,

and it's called the Plank Knee Slide. And the one thing that should jump out at you right from

the get-go here is that I'm getting into that posterior pelvic tilt once again. So, I bring

my knee in towards my elbow, but then I slide it up because as I do that, it's going to lift my

pelvis into that natural posterior tilt. Again, actually engaging those lower ab fibers.

And if you're doing the exercise incorrectly, you have caused the predominance of the hip flexors.

All you have to do is just slow it down. If you go slower here, you'll be able to feel the right

muscles doing the work. And ultimately that's what we're trying to do. But if you're up for even more

of a challenge, then maybe you don't want to just do all of your exercises down on the floor.

Instead, what you can do is just pop yourself up onto a bar because the bar gives you a chance to

do the same thing with a Hanging Leg Raise. But nothing changes, you still have to establish

that posterior pelvic tilt and you still want to try to bring your pelvis up as you do the exercise

along with your legs. But the difference here is that the changing body position effectively

increases the weight of your legs because you have to now lift them fully against gravity,

almost for the duration of the entire exercise. On the floor, that's not necessarily the case.

Regardless, incorporating the same three principles we talked about in the beginning

is going to make this exercise a lot more effective than just simply flipping your legs

up and down without ever focusing on what's really happening with your pelvis. Which made me wonder,

Jeff, what are you still doing carrying that damn muscle marker around? It s because I m

not done yet. You see, there's two things you can do to put the science back in strength and

actually get more out of the same exercises I just showed you. And that's, number one,

engaging the adductors. Because we know if we just squeeze our knees together, which is easily done

on three of the four exercises that we can engage and stabilize the pelvis from below,

allowing for a stronger contraction of the lower abdominal muscles. So, if you take that Swiper and

you squeeze your knees together the whole time, the adductors will be easily engaged. If you

take that Reverse Tailbone Lift again, squeezing the knees is very easily accomplished and added.

And if you go to that Hanging Leg Raise, the same thing can be applied here too each time, allowing

you to feel the exercise even more. If you do the Plank Knee Slide, two things should happen,

the back foot that stays on the ground, you should almost feel like you're going to drag it

inward to engage the adductor on that side. And then you take the other leg that's going

towards your elbow, and you actually bring it a little bit inward. And even if you want to take

another step further, you do the second thing, and that is you add a little bit of rotation. Because

as you'll see, the lower ab fibers here actually have a little bit of an oblique orientation

as they taper down towards the pelvis. Which means they're sort of tailor made for rotation. So,

you can take that Plank Knee Slide and go towards the opposite elbow to get some of that rotation.

But again, on the Swiper, no one says you have to bring it straight back, go a little bit towards

the right shoulder and a little bit towards the left shoulder on alternating reps.

And also, on that Tailbone Lift go a little bit towards the right shoulder or a little bit towards

the left shoulder. Just a little bit of rotation can be introduced even here on the Hanging Leg

Raise to introduce more of that lower ab fiber engagement. Remember, guys, I say it all the time,

follow the fibers, whatever the direction they run in, that's the direction you should move in.

And that's how you get more out of every rep with the exercises you already be doing.

But I promise you that nutrition piece, because no matter how many times you do these exercises

or how many reps you do, you're not going to specifically target the lower abdominal fat and

get rid of it. As a matter of fact, it's the last to come off. It's even most men in a lot of women,

for that matter, lose weight. They go from the head to the toes and the toes to the head,

and they kind of meet in the middle, which means that as they drop body fat and their

face and their neck and their upper chest or their lower legs and then to their thighs,

what oftentimes remains, is that lower abdominal fat. It's the most stubborn of all.

So you're going to have to get to lower levels of body fat in order to see it go away.

And while you're going to have to be hypocaloric to do it, you don't have to starve yourself or

make it unenjoyable. Guys, I have a whole day of eating that I put together where I show you, you

can eat carbs and actually eat enjoyable foods. I'm going to link that for you here.