Exercises that support your abdominal muscles in the supine position can be a very safe and useful way to train the musculature of your core and trunk region. One of the reasons why performing a core exercise in the supine position is because you must learn to properly utilize a posterior pelvic tilt while doing this exercise to execute the technique correctly and efficiently.
When laying on the ground and rolling the crest of your hips toward your rib cage, the body will use more of the surface abdominal muscles and deeper abdominal muscles, like the psoas muscles. A posterior pelvic tilt while on your back will also flatten out the lower back, which will decrease the likelihood of back injuries occurring during this exercise and in everyday life. Additionally, flattening out the lower back will teach your body to position your hips in a proper position when laying down and facing upward. It is important to learn how to position your hips in a posterior pelvic tilt because you are essentially utilizing your glutes to roll the crest of your hips toward your ribs and utilizing your deepest psoas muscles to stabilize the spine as well. Learning to utilize these muscles is very important when standing because you will support your spine and learn to keep these muscles engaged throughout the day which will lead to less injury and less fatigue and in your abdominal and back muscles.
The video featured in this article shows an Eccentric Leg Lift. The word eccentric refers to the lowering motion of an exercise or the lengthening of a specific group of muscles. In this case, the eccentric motion is the lowering motion of the legs from an elevated position and focuses on the core musculature which supports the legs from falling to the ground with gravity acting as resistance. In addition, eccentric movement causes more muscle adaptation to a fewer group of muscles, which will significantly improve muscle cell size and endurance of areas of the core region that are sometimes neglected. This is a great exercise to throw into your abdominal training routine because it will break the monotony of doing your standard ab training routine. Variety overtime is very important to any sort of training, in this case specifically abdominal training. Adding a new type of stress on the body will cause the body to adapt to that type of stress from the exercise that is placed upon it. Therefore, after doing a few weeks of the same core movements, it’s a good idea to change it up. Throwing the Eccentric Leg Lift in to your abdominal routine would be a great exercise movement to add into your program if it does not involve any sort of eccentric training.
Lastly, the Eccentric Leg Lift is very beneficial for people who have low back problems because you are lying flat on your back and avoiding sheering forces on your back due to the support that the ground gives you. In addition, with learning how to properly utilize the posterior pelvic tilt, the ground is a great place to start as well. The eccentric movement also calls for a lower rep scheme but increases the time under tension, which means that performing less reps will decrease the likelihood of some sort of tweak or strain occurring throughout the movement. When you’re not sure, slower is usually better. You will also see a few modifications of this exercise and the video that will decrease the difficulty of the exercise and still make the exercise effective with less difficulty.
