How to do a Kip-Up or Kick-Up? The kip-up movement is one you must have noticed in nearly every martial arts movie. It involves getting up from the ground by kicking the legs forward in the air. You might also learn this skill if you joined any gymnastic or MMA class near your home. Some of the renowned celebrities like Bruce Lee, Akshay Kumar, Jackie Chan, and Jason Statham have performed the kick-up in their movies and during tournaments. It seems like a natural movement because they show it as if it's easy to do and a part of their fighting style. It can be easy to learn if you don’t give up easily, and then you can show it off to your friends and family members or just learn it as a handy fighting skill, especially during self-defense. 5 Steps to Learn a Kip-up or Kick-up Step 1: Stretching and Warm Up The first step before learning any new bodyweight exercise is warm-up and stretching. It is especially important when you are going to engage the relaxed muscles and trying to do...
Abs Exercises for Beginners: The Top 5 Must-Follow!
Abs are one of the most popular and commonly trained areas among athletes worldwide. Even people seeking body transformation often focus on building a strong core and great abs. The benefit of having great abs is not limited to physical appearance, but also other areas.
Abs exercises for beginners are the best approach to begin this journey. However, many people fail to understand this fact and often make the mistake of trying intermediate or advanced-level abs workouts.
Today, we will cover a few simple abs exercises that don’t require special equipment. One can even do them anywhere, i.e., even when at home or in a small space.
5 Abs Exercise for Beginners
Forearm Plank
A plank is a hollow body hold with arms and lifting the body in a straight posture. It is commonly practiced for building core strength and abs. However, I have personally noticed that people often make the mistake of bending their back or lowering their legs after they can’t hold the plank posture any longer.
If you are a beginner in this exercise, you should try to stabilize your plank posture without doing a hollow hold. Once you get comfortable with it, try to do a hollow hold by pulling your stomach inward and slightly arching your back.
While trying to do this new posture, try to avoid too much back bend and too much leg movement. Keep the legs as straight as possible. If you can manage it for 30-60 seconds and do three sets, it’s good enough. However, if you feel that at any point, you are spoiling the posture or your hands, shoulders, neck, or legs are feeling exhausted, you should take a rest to avoid injury.
Crunches
I have practiced numerous ab exercises; however, crunches have been the easiest for me. They require lying down on the ground and crunching your abs muscles by moving your upper body, looking straight upwards or towards the roof. When you come down to the original posture, you complete a single crunch.
While doing lying crunches, your legs aren’t straight. In fact, your knees are bent and your feet are on the ground. The ab crunches have a lot of variations, such as hands on opposite shoulders, arms straight, boxing crunches, etc. The basic one requires you to keep your hands behind your head and perform a crunch, as mentioned. The ab crunches are the easiest way to build the top two abs.
Side Heel Touch
The side heel touch exercise is done as it sounds. It requires lying down in a crunch position with your arms straight and on the ground, too. Once you come into this posture, you must touch one heel and then another. It completes one rep of side heel touch on each side.
The side heel touch is a good exercise for building obliques. However, all abs and muscles will only become visible if you have a low body fat percentage. Additionally, all ab exercises help to burn calories and assist you in the weight loss journey.
The side heel touch exercise also has a variation of side toe touch, which, as the name suggests, requires toe touching while beginning from the same posture as the heel touch.
Reverse Crunches
The reverse crunch exercise helps to build the lower abs. They require beginning from the crunch posture with the hands tucked below your back or kept on the side, and crunching the lower abs by bringing both legs towards your lower chest and then going back to the original position.
Similar to other ab exercises, reverse crunches will have a great impact on your abs. Beginners will start with ten repetitions and three sets. A single is counted when the legs reach the lower chest area and come back to the original position with the knees bent.
It would be more effective if you avoid keeping your feet on the ground until you have finished the last repetition. If ten reps are easy, it means you have a good core strength and capacity for doing more. However, avoid pushing reverse crunches or any other abs exercises too much, as they would leave a lasting impression after you complete the workout.
High Plank Hold
While there are many other easy ab exercises for beginners, I personally feel that a high plank hold with your arms straight and stomach tucked is more effective for beginners, as it is easy to perform and targets all ab muscles, while strengthening the shoulders and arms.
Also, if you build capacity for doing high plank holds, you can proceed to mountain climbers, spiderman crunches, and other challenging abs exercises. Additionally, it is a great exercise, often performed for doing difficult calisthenics exercises like planche and handstand.
A high plank hold of 30 to 60 seconds is good enough for beginners, especially if they can do three to four sets. Moreover, the high plank hold can help to perform more plank raises, which require bending your forearms and touching the ground with them, and then coming back to the high plank hold posture.
Conclusion
While you can find many ab exercises for beginners, the forearm plank, crunches, reverse crunches, side heel touch, and high plank hold seem quite simple for beginners. Also, if you do three to four sets of ten or more repetitions, they are very effective.
An abs workout with these five exercises can target all ab muscles, without worrying. Moreover, it wouldn’t require much space. However, anyone trying these exercises must first understand the correct way of doing them.
A personal fitness trainer with experience in online and offline fitness classes can certainly prove a useful asset in this regard. Moreover, the personal fitness coach can provide classes on a flexible schedule. Write back or comment to begin your online fitness class journey.