Train abdomen, don’t strain neck

LITTLE ROCK — You’ve already learned it’s impossible to “spot reduce” by doing abdominal exercises. When the body sheds fat, it sheds it from head to toe - not just where you wish it would.

Other things to keep in mind about abdominal training:

Proper form. Avoid pulling on the head when performing crunches and other exercises. Yes, your head starts to feel heavy and you do want to give it a little support to prevent neck strain. To provide this support, when you’ve got your arms behind your head, allow your head to rest against your fingertips. Don’t push up with your hands.

Focus on using your abdominal muscles to lift your upper body. The head, neck and shoulders should move as one unit.

You can do some strengthening/endurance exercises on the floor, or while sitting at your desk or kitchen chair.

To exercise the abdominals while sitting, sit with good posture and then slowly allow your upper body to move backward, as if trying to touch the back of your shoulders to the top of the chair. Be careful not to round your back. Stop when you reach the point where you can no longer maintain a slight arch in the low back. Slowly return to your upright position.

To work the obliques (sides of the waist) rotate the body from side to side as you come up.

Performing hundreds of crunches might sound impressive, but a closer look typically reveals that form, pace and other factors are being compromised.

When you move too quickly through a repetition, you allow the muscles to be under tension for only a fraction of a second, detracting significantly from strength and endurance benefits. Instead of thinking about how many reps you can do, slow your movementsdown and focus on making each repetition as challenging as possible.

Training the abdominals correctly requires a rest between sets of the same exercise, so you might want to alternate sets of different exercises. Think about including lifting and bending movements as well as twisting movements.

There are two schools of thought as to whether abdominal exercises should be performed before or after other exercises.

Generally, most people don’t work the abdominals with true high intensity, so are unlikely to pre-fatigue these muscles enough to interfere with other exercises. In these cases, starting with abdominal work serves to warm up the muscles, which may potentially give youa better workout.

So suit yourself.

Marjie Gilliam is an international sports sciences master-certified personal trainer and fitness consultant.