Video: Abdominal Exercises to Do on a Decline Bench

Video Transcript

Hi. I'm Billy Beck III from Billy Beck III Training Center. Today, I'm going to show you how to do exercises using a decline abdominal bench. With me as always to demonstrate is super trainer Brian Francis. Now, the first movement is going to be an inclined reverse crunch, which is going to target the lower abdominals. You're going to work the entire midsection, but it's going to target more the lower abdominals than any other part. You're going to begin by putting your feet usually where your head goes on this bench traditionally and grab onto the secure padding at the top of the bench. Now, you're going to lift your legs up. In this position, you're going to lift your hips off the bench and then lower slowly under control to where you hips touch the bench and then right back up. If you go down further than this position, you're going to be working more your hip flexors and taking some of the attention off the lower abdominals and the midsection, which is the goal. You're going to begin, a good number to start with is 10 reps, but it has to be challenging. Once you feel that challenge, you're going to stop the movement and we're going to go to the second movement. This is what we call cross crunch. This is more of an untraditional movement. You're going to hook one foot under the pad on the opposite side that it would normally go. Then you're going to hook your other leg underneath the decline bench to where it's secure onto the middle post. Then you'll begin by laying back and then twisting as you come up. Now, by twisting, you're going to emphasize not just your abdominals but you're going to emphasize more the intercostals and the internal, external oblique. A good goal here would be 10 to 20 reps, and then you would go to the other side. Once you complete all your reps here, you would then finish with the final movement. Where we're going to go back to the traditional crunch. The decline crunch which now is going to be a lot more challenging since you've performed these other two movements. Again, you're going to hook your feet, you're going to lay back and you're going to lift your shoulders up as far as they can go by moving your spine. The entire time what you can't see here is that Brian is contracting his abdominals not jut on the way up, but on the way down. Remember at no point doing any of these three movements do the muscles in your midsection disengage. They're tight the whole time. And that has been how to use the decline bench to work your abdominals, and I'm Billy Beck III.