How to train your lower four abdominal muscles

Anyone who has trained their abdominal muscles should know that the abdominal muscles on the human body are composed of pieces, with a minimum of two pieces and a maximum of eight pieces. And most people find that the upper abdominal muscles are actually very easy to shape, but after training the upper abdominal muscles, it becomes very difficult to train the lower abdominal muscles. Therefore, many people are troubled by how to train the lower four abdominal muscles. What are the training methods for the lower four abdominal muscles?

1. How to exercise the lower abdominal muscles

Crunches, as the name suggests, means rolling up the body, similar to what we call sit-ups. Mainly exercise our rectus abdominis. We can do crunches on a flat plate or on an incline board.

When doing sit-ups on a flat board, we can place the soles of our feet against the flat board and then roll up our upper body. It is easier to do this way, but it can only exercise the upper four abdominal muscles, and the lower four abdominal muscles are basically not exercised.

When doing crunches on the flat board, we can also hang our legs in the air and roll up the upper and lower body towards the middle at the same time. This movement is relatively difficult, but it can train eight abdominal muscles at the same time.

Doing crunches on the lower incline board is more intense than the one above, but because your feet are fixed, you can only exercise the upper four abdominal muscles. The crunch exercise is usually done in sets of 30, and you should do about 10 sets.

But it mainly depends on whether you have enough time. As long as you can practice about 5 sets every day, I believe there will be results.

2. Exercises for the lower abdomen

2.1. Lie on your back and lift your legs. For people with weak upper limb strength, it is easier to control the leg lifting movement on a flat board.

2.2. Hanging leg raises require a certain amount of arm and shoulder strength to maintain the necessary body stability and exercise the lower abdomen compared to supine leg raises.

2.3. Roman chair leg raise is a relatively stable type of hanging leg raise. For people with insufficient arm and shoulder strength, this is a more effective way to exercise the lower abdomen.

2.4. Vertical leg raise: This exercise mainly targets the lower abdomen. The legs are always in a vertical position for lifting and lowering.

3. Exercises for the upper and lower abdomen

3.1. Lie on your back and lift your hips and legs. This is the simplest exercise and a good choice for people with weak upper limb strength.

3.2. Hang and lift your hips and legs with a large range of motion to exercise the entire rectus abdominis.

3.3. Supported hip and leg raises are similar to hanging hip and leg raises. It is usually done with support from a Roman chair or parallel bars.

3.4. Lying on your back with your knees bent is equivalent to double crunches, which will exercise your upper and lower abdomen at the same time.

3. 5. Supine straight-leg raises. The straight-leg raises are shaped like a V, so they are called V-ups. They are similar to supine raises with bent knees, and are also double crunches that can exercise the entire rectus abdominis.