Stomach Exercises You Can Do Without Straining Your Neck

Yes, You Can Exercise Your Stomach and Protect Your Neck

Everyone wants a fit body, especially fit, tight abs. We see people with these types of abs on our television sets and in our magazines. But we can only achieve flat abs with a lot of hard work. If you are like a lot of people, achieving the abs you want is even harder because you have problems with your neck.

People today are more stress filled than ever. A lot of times, this stress will center in one’s neck. This can cause tremendous amount of pain, swelling and even headaches. Exercise and other activities can also put a strain on the neck area.

Even though we have neck problems, we still have to exercise our abnormal muscles, the ab area. It isn’t just because we want to look good. We have to do it because the abs are the core of our beginnings. With strong ab muscles, are backs still better aligned and since the ab is the biggest muscle near our hearts, we need to keep it fit.

Here a few exercises I have learned to that doesn't put a strain on my neck.

Crunch

Yes, you can do the crunch. But you must support your neck while doing it.

Lie on the floor, on your back. Place your feet on the floor, close to your bottom as possible, knees together. Now place your hands behind your neck for support. Relax your neck. Slowly raise your shoulders off of the floor, contracting only the abdominal muscles. Hold, slowly return to the floor. Be sure you gently return to the floor.

Leg raises.

Lay on the floor on your back. Bend your legs. Now extend your right leg out, slowly lift it up to knee height. Hold. Now lower it back to the ground. Do the same with your left leg.

When doing this, if you place your hand on your stomach, you should be able to feel the muscles working.

This works the lower part of our abs, the hardest area to work.

The hip roll

This works the obloquies (the sides of our abs).

Again, lay on the floor, on your back. Now bend your legs up towards your body, slowly roll your body to the left, hold, right, hold and back to starting position. Do this slowly and try to keep your neck as loose as you can.

Standing rotation