At the end of every workout I’ve been doing 1min of ab crunches (various types) followed by 1 min of farmers carries (Everyday I switch between front loaded, suitcase carry, overhead, and goblet).
In the past seven weeks that I have done these I have seen easily the biggest change in my core I have ever noticed before.
My question is that because I have been performing them for almost 8 weeks now, is there some small modification I can do to keep these progressions coming as fast as they are, or is changing up the crunch style, along with the carry enough?
At the end of every workout I’ve been doing 1min of ab crunches (various types) followed by 1 min of farmers carries (Everyday I switch between front loaded, suitcase carry, overhead, and goblet).
In the past seven weeks that I have done these I have seen easily the biggest change in my core I have ever noticed before.
My question is that because I have been performing them for almost 8 weeks now, is there some small modification I can do to keep these progressions coming as fast as they are, or is changing up the crunch style, along with the carry enough?
Thanks[/quote]
Fantastic to hear about your success!!! Very good strategy.
The abdominal exercise is actually irrelevant (you can use any exercise or stick to the same, it doesn’t matter, it’s only about bringing blood into the area). It is more important to vary the carry (which you are already doing so that’s fine) and workload. So I would suggest playing with the duration and load of the carries. Add 15 seconds for 3 weeks (1 minute / 1:15 / 1:30) then add weight restarting the 3 weeks cycle at 1 minute.
The key to the farmers walk seems to be able go for over 1 min, but is it possible to substitute a 15sec sprint for a 1 min farmers carry and still get the desired results?
any other exercise that you recommend besides the crunch CT? Ive got back problems and have always tried to steer clear of crunches or other repetitive spine flexion exercises. thanks!
[quote]WaterlooWarrior wrote:
any other exercise that you recommend besides the crunch CT? Ive got back problems and have always tried to steer clear of crunches or other repetitive spine flexion exercises. thanks![/quote]
Waterloo, look at CT’s response above:
If flexion hurts, would planks help you with no pain?
The farmers and crunches, listed as for Advanced Athletes Only in the article, is no joke…today I did 1 round, 1 round. My abs cramped so bad I had to stand and breathe slowly, allowing the cramping to stop for a few minutes lol. I was afraid to bend over and grab my water bottle and training log. It hurt so bad I left the db’s on the floor of the gym and just walked away. It was a terrible pain, lol.
I think what also caused the issue was that I hit abs yesterday too and they were already kinda sore this morning before I started training. I’m gonna stick to the farmers and just change the ab exercise as well to something like planks cause I already to sprint intervals and kb swing intervals on other days.
yeah planks work but i find my shoulders end up giving out earlier than my abs and i find it difficult to do multiple rounds of 1 min planks. im thinking leg raises or something like that
a question for the OP:
when you noticed these drastic changes in your midsection from using this method, would you say you were cutting down, bulking up or just maintaining?
I like the idea of the upper body bike, if your gym has one. Instead of pulling and pushing with the shoulders and arms, generate the force with the rotation of the trunk. Thoughts?
At the end of every workout I’ve been doing 1min of ab crunches (various types) followed by 1 min of farmers carries (Everyday I switch between front loaded, suitcase carry, overhead, and goblet).
In the past seven weeks that I have done these I have seen easily the biggest change in my core I have ever noticed before.
My question is that because I have been performing them for almost 8 weeks now, is there some small modification I can do to keep these progressions coming as fast as they are, or is changing up the crunch style, along with the carry enough?
Thanks[/quote]
awesome success story!
out of interest, how long were you performing the abs/farmers walk routines?
[quote]Carhart531 wrote:
Planks WILL NOT work…not nearly as well anyway.
The whole idea is to isolate your blood flow to one area of the body, in this case the core.
Planks don’t isolate the blood flow. Blood flows, almost equally, to your core, shoulders, hips…and some goes to your flexed leg muscles as well. [/quote]
To a good extent I’ve found that to be true about the planks. The only way I’ve found planks to really hit the core is to really, forcefully exhale and flex the abs, then inhale into the diaphram fully as well. Then, and only then can I really get it to burn but the burn doesn’t hit as fast as when you’re doing something like crunches I’ve found since mixing in different ab exercises.