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G'day everyone this is Ash at Weekend Surf Warrior
where, for those of you who aren't used to my videos,
essentially we answer questions about surf & fitness related stuff
So if you've got questions please feel free to send them to me at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com
If you like these videos please click 'Like'
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This week's video question comes from Natasha, and
this in response to
our blog on why
it's a bad idea to do crunches off the floor
and the reasons for that, principally, was because it shortened the abdominal wall,
it ruined the neck, the back of the neck, and it trashed the lower back.
So her question is essentially this: what abdominal exercises ARE good for surfing?
This is AWESOME because it's really easy to just trash an exercise
but it's a lot harder to come up with actual exercises in its place
So, what I want to cover this week
is: 1) we want to talk about the importance of Swiss Balls and 2)
we're going to talk about how to use the Swiss Ball for abdominal conditioning
OK, so, your Swiss Ball, Physio Ball, Balance Ball
whatever you want to call it, just don't
call it a Pilates Ball,
this has been around FOREVER. They are generally made from Latex, although there are Latex-free versions
of it now, and essentially,
what this is used for is everything! The reason why all my programmes
contain Swiss Balls in for one main reason:
it is the most versatile piece of training equipment, apart from
a sense of humour, that I can possibly think of. This is an amazing tool for re-teaching
the body how to train both in static
and dynamic stability.
What that means, basically, is that we can use this to do pretty much anything.
When you look at the sizing for a Swiss Ball, it's all relative
to your height. If you're about 6ft
you will probably be wanting a 65cm size Swiss Ball or above, and if you're less than 6ft,
as a general rule, a 55cm Swiss Ball will do you just fine.
OK, so how do you know if the ball is the right size for you?
What you need to do, is you need to pump it up, go the gym,
sit on top of it, and see how it feels.
So what you want to be looking for are two things: 1) you want to be
looking for the mid point of the knee, and up into the greater trochanter. So that's
the little knobbly bit on the side of the hip. What you want to see is at least
a 10 degree difference THIS way from the greater trochanter to the knee.
So this here is a 55cm Swiss Ball, and I'm 6ft 1"
and you can clearly see that the knee and the hip
are pretty much parallel, so this ball would be too small for me.
The first thing you should do if you're not using your own Swiss Ball when you walk into a gym
is give it a little bit of a rub. Walk in, get your hands on it,
have a bit of a feel. What you're feeling for is anything sharp: you're feeling for glass,
you're feeling for bits of crap that other people have walked into the gym. You're looking for anything that might make this thing puncture.
Now most Swiss Balls should be puncture
resistant, which means that even if you did pierce this thing, it will take 1-2 mins
to totally deflate.
So when it comes to
abdominal conditioning, you need to understand first of all,
what your abdominals ARE. There's a lot of emphasis
placed on the upper six-pack and ***-abdominus
which is important in both forward flexion and controlling
extension. That's only ONE part of abdominal conditioning.
The other abdominals that we need to understand is the
external & internal obliques,
which cross over the mid-line of the body like this,
and when the contract, they pull into rotation.
Especially for surfers, if we're talking about abdominal training
for surf conditioning, that rotational element
is VITALLY important, because surfing is rotational. Here's a couple of exercises
for twisting: the lower body russian twist is the simplest version, concentrating on using
the abs to twist the ball from one side to the other.
This can then be progressed onto an upper body russian twist which
you would have seen Kai Otton doing before he went on to win in Portugal
in 2013. This can also be used for power by increasing the speed of the movement.
The supine lateral ball roll is a fantastic abdominal conditioning exercise
for surfing
because this teaches the body and the abdominal rotators how to stabilise
the body
while a wave or something else tries to twist you in another direction.
The aim here is to try and keep the body as still as possible
while the Swiss Ball tries to twist you in another direction.
The third muscle group to work when it comes to abdominal conditioning is the transverse abdominus. If there was a line from my six pack all the way down to
the *** symphysis, what we would see
is lines of muscle tissue running around my body, like a corset.
When the origin and insertion pull together it draws by belly button inward.
The deep abdominal conditioning
is also vitally important when it comes to supporting and stabilising the pelvis.
The good news is that you don't need a Swiss Ball to be able
to train your deep abdominals. Just simply using your thumbs
as a way of palpating the deep tissues and using your breathing mechanics to strengthen
the diaphragm and the deep abdominals
is the fastest and most practical way of going about it.
Once you've mastered this, you can then integrate this into a horstance
exercise
and if you're interested in more information how to perform this with perfect form,
go check out my blog entitled 'Horsestance Inside and Out'.
And that's when you can start
thinking about *** Abdominus. Once you're happy that you've got good
rotational obliques, you've got good deep abdominal conditioning, you can THEN look at
the *** Abdominus, and the *** Abdominus is partitioned, so that
partitioning of the muscle means that it can do lots & lots of different things.
It can control our body in extension,
it can flex,
and from the belly button downwards, you've got your lower *** abdominus
which is vitally important to support, control and stabilise the pelvis.
Here's a couple exercises
for your *** abdominus: the forward ball roll is great for teaching you how to support and stabilise
the pelvis
and the lower back. It can be progressed using single arm versions
and doing it up off the toes to make it harder.
If you do want to do an abdominal crunch, then this is how to do it
safely:
before you do this, make sure you don't get any dizziness. If you experience any dizziness
doing this exercise, please STOP immediately and get
your upper neck checked.
Roll yourself over a Swiss Ball so the head and hips are in contact with the ball,
place the tongue at the roof of the mouth, flex the chin to the chest,
and then roll up only as far as you can without you legs taking over.
This works the *** abdominus
through a full range of motion, as opposed to doing it off the floor, where you only get the last 30%.
And if you want to go super-functional
you can then pick up that Swiss Ball and you can slam it into the floor
doing a soccer toss.
This is not only a great, functional, *** abdominus strengthening exercise
but it's a lot of fun.
There's a couple of body-weight and Swiss Ball based abdominal conditioning exercises,
that are not only going to assist surfers
but also assist ANYONE who's looking to do some basic bodyweight
abdominal conditioning, anyone looking for variety in their routine
other than just crunching and planking. I can't think of
two more useless exercises in the gym. I know I've spoken to death about crunching,
I'll talk about planking
in another blog. If you're interested in hearing about it please put a question in the comments below, and let us know if you want to know why
I think planking is a waste of time. Thanks very much guys! If you've got questions for me
please send them to me
at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com. Once again, if you liked the video
please click 'Like', if you really like it please click 'Subscribe',
it won't take 2 seconds but it'll mean the world of difference to us.
If you've got questions, I'd love to see if I can get you some answers. My name's Ash
thanks for watching my video. Hooroo!