The second type of movement is the crunch. Crunches pull and contract the abs inward and together so that the upper body is curled and the shoulders are brought toward the waist. They focus more directly on the abs because they don’t use the upper legs or waist as part of the pulling motion. Although the movement involved in crunches is pretty small when compared to sit-ups, crunches are actually a very intense abdominal movement when done properly.
The next portion of the abdominal muscle group is the obliques. The obliques are located on either side of your upper body just above your hips. These muscles are involved when you rotate your upper body from side to side or when you bend to the side, like when you’re doing side bends.
In all honesty, the obliques are mostly stabilizers and aren’t under a lot of stress in every day life or even when you go in the gym. Your goal in working these muscles should be to keep them toned and well defined, but you should avoid working them with heavy weights. You might be asking yourself, “Hey, if I want to really add strength, I need to work with heavy weights, right?”
This is true, if you really want to build that muscle up and have giant hips, you’ll want to use a heavy weight. Maybe some of the readers want this, but my guess is that most of us would rather have the broad shoulders that taper down to a small and well defined waist line. In fact, even the largest body builders work the obliques without any resistance in order to avoid building a big waist that will only make their body shape look less impressive.
Finally, the intercostals are the small muscle groups which run diagonally on either side of your upper abs. They are small in size and rest in the space between your ribs. But these muscles are real crowd-pleasers if you can get them to really show through. The intercostals are worked when you do your crunches to either side. Just throw in a twisting movement to each side as you do your crunches to hit the intercostals.
Now that you understand the muscles involved in your ab workouts, lets talk about some of the ab-action specifics. There has been some debate in the past about whether working your abs hard can widen your waistline. The truth is, each individual may react differently to an ab workout, but most bodybuilders don’t use added resistance when doing sit-ups or crunches. Their goal is to build their physique, not to be as huge as possible.
But then again, it depends entirely on your goals. You may have seen pictures of the huge muscle men that look like they have bulging stomachs from the side when they don’t suck it in. Those guys are in prime condition and have very low body fat compositions, and their stomach is reaaly a mass of muscle. That might be your goal, but most people are shooting for the washboard abs on a smaller waist. This ripped up look is achieved by doing a higher number of reps without resistance.
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