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SPORT TALK
Olympic Abs Jon Robinson, BSc (Hons) Exercise Physiology
Exercise expert Jon Robinson offers tips on how to get gold medal abs
Opening Ceremony Why are sit-ups and stomach crunches so common in the gym you go to every day? It surely must be because they are effective, but most people go back to the gym time after time and never see a significant difference to the toning of their abdominal muscles. Why is this? Is there something else we should be doing? How about we look to the experts? Surely the leaders in applying cutting edge exercise science have the answer; I’m talking about Olympic athletes. Tune into the London Games this month and you’ll see a whole constellation of perfectly formed superstars sporting 4, 6, 8 and 24-packs in ultra high definition, athletes with divine physiques, like Cheng Fei, Guo Jingjing or Yang Wei. These guys and girls have granite abs that could stop a point blank round from an elephant gun, but you’ll never ever see them doing a simple sit up in training, simply put because this alone just doesn’t do the trick. In raising either your legs or torso up from the floor, you recruit the hip flexor muscles and quads (the front thigh muscles). The abs only work as a secondary stabilizer, meaning that they merely assist the other muscles in this exercise, which is simply not good enough; to make them adapt, we want to target the abs muscles head on! To properly train the abs you need functional movements, mostly where you get your butt up off the floor! There are a million and one ways to do this but all the best ones require you to use forces of nature and the weight of your own body. A highly effective combo is the captain’s chair with twist (pictured above) for approximately 20 - 30 seconds immediately followed by a particular type of sit-up, called the Janda sit up for approximately 40 - 60 seconds until
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exhaustion. With the captain’s chair, either with your weight supported on your elbows, or better still if you’re able to hold yourself up, curl the knees up in a smooth motion and twist to the side, then lower the knees, twist to the other side and so on. For Janda sit-ups, lie on your back and curl the torso upwards only as far as is possible to keep the feet in contact with the ground. This is the most important point; your feet must stay in touch with the ground. The reason for this combo is the first exercise hits the type 2b muscle fibres really hard, the muscles that respond to sudden changes in movement. The Janda sit-up uses the type 2a muscle fibres, which cope better with endurance. These maximise the amount of work done, challenge the correct muscle fibres on the abs and allow your body to adapt to its maximum potential. If you're a fitness newbie and/or are carrying a little too much extra body fat, start with Janda's only and first work on your cardio and diet to get that extra jelly down.
Closing Ceremony If you want to get Olympic results in double quick time and stand proudly atop the podium, best ditch the simple sit-ups with a more rounded workout routine, and who knows, you might just be heading to Rio for 2016. Jon Robinson is the founder of webbased platform Makethisworkout. For in depth instructions on how to do these exercises properly, as well as other helpful tips on duration of exercise and routine guidance, check out his blog on www.makethisworkout.com
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