Be Kind to your Insides
Unconventional yet Safer Exercises for your Abs

Naturally you want to avoid punches while dishing it out, but for when the time comes you'll need to be prepared to take a punch too. There are many different exercises for strengthening your abdominals, but in this post I'm going to describe a few safe exercises that are not normally used.

Now if you’ve ever talked to a body builder about their training they might tell you that today is their leg day, chest day, or today is “[insert-favorite-body part-here] day”. But there’s one guy who was right on the money when he said, "Everyday is a kidney day." The same applies to your liver, and pancreas. When we have gotten through a tough fight, and when we work hard to improve our fitness, our bodies have to work extra hard to flush out all of the toxins and wastes that come as a result. Most people don't give their insides the proper care that they need. Over training can set you up for shitty workouts when your insides have had more than what they can handle. In fact when it comes to training the abs there are a few exercises that are still being practiced that are detrimental to training and perhaps even dangerous to fighters.

You've probably heard of the exercise in which a medicine ball is thrown or dropped onto a fighter's midsection. The idea behind this is that it will increase a fighter's resilience to body punches by conditioning the abdominal muscles to become tense at the moment of impact. This may be true but many people forget what lies behind those muscles. No one should ever forget the all important organs which lie directly beneath them are on the receiving end too. Talking about the kidneys, liver, pancreas, they have to work hard enough patching everything up that they don't deserve to in the line of fire themselves. What about the organs that are involved with digesting food, or allow you to have kids? Is there anyone in their right mind that would want to purposefully injure their insides? Besides, your muscles were not designed to be the perfect shock absorbers for your organs.

Another exercise that follows this same school of thought is to stand still and let your opponent use your stomach as a punching bag. Again your guts are taking one for the team. The consequences range from your pee resembling the color of Kool-aid, to the typical side-effect of feeling tired like you would from overtraining, and even worst is if you go overboard, your kidney's might have to throw in the towel! You get the point. Now for the rest of us death is not an option since we can get all the same benefits without turning into an organ donor ourselves.

Be on the Ball
Here's one old school approach that uses the medicine ball to tense the abs while also taking the "getting hit" part out of the equation.

First assume a push up position. Place a medicine ball beneath your belly. Now put your hands behind your back with the medicine now supporting most of your weight. Keep your stomach muscles very tight while turning your body to your left and right. It will be uncomfortable at first, but over time this can make your abdominal muscles stronger without injuring the organs behind them. Alternatively you can use a durable basketball, since the ball’s weight is not a factor in this exercise.

Drop down on the Ball and give me 20
The Swiss ball, also known as an exercise or fitness ball can be a good way to introduce tensing your muscles upon impact in a safer manner than what is typically practiced.

To begin the exercise, start in a kneeling position with a folded towel or rubber/foam mat beneath your knees. In doing so keep your torso erect with only a slight bend at your hips. Make sure that your feet are secure. If there is nothing that you can find to put your feet under, you may then have a partner assist you by holding your ankles down. The Swiss ball should be placed in front of you. Allow yourself to fall forward onto the Swiss ball, and tense your abdominal muscles hard at the moment of impact. If you want to take impact out entirely, you can also do this exercise in a different manner without the use of a Swiss ball as explained below.

To perform this exercise the other way you simply lower your body to the ground under control, and then bring yourself back up. It can be a very humbling exercise requiring you to tense your abs while your hamstrings and glutes also get a fair share of the work. Note that for most people it is difficult to bring themselves up at first. To overcome this you may have to lower yourself down to a push up position (knees should still remain against the floor), and use a little arm push to get you back to the starting position. This is also a great way of developing the knee flexion function of your hip flexors.

The Heavy Bag Strikes Back
Perhaps you don’t have a Swiss ball, but you’re still turned on by the idea of getting hit. If you got a heavy bag available, then there’s another old school exercise that you can do.

It’s simple. Stand in front of the bag and then give it a little push. Allow the bag to hit your midsection, and brace for the impact. Some words of caution before you proceed with this exercise: a heavy bag does not have as much give to as a Swiss ball naturally does, therefore there’s higher risk that the force will penetrate into your organs. To minimize this risk it would be wise to only allow the bag to hit you with small amount of force, or you may go with a different exercise altogether.

Flexing with a Purpose
Taking from the body builder’s toolbox and worth mentioning here is flexing, which can be put to good use by boxers as well. When it comes to taking an unavoidable punch to the body that can neither be lessened through riding the punch, then the ability to tense the muscles upon impact is certainly an ability worth having. When body builders practice their poses, they are tensing particular muscle groups as hard as possible. Through many long hours of practice body builders will have acquired a high degree of muscular control, and for a side note more muscle tone. If you ever watched the film “Way of the Dragon”, during the scene where Bruce Lee is fighting Chuck Norris, he demonstrates a very high level of muscle control by rotating his shoulder blades. Through practice a boxer can keep their stomach reasonably tense and tighten them up on a quick moment’s notice should the unavoidable occur.

Practice this at your own leisure for a few minutes at a time. This is not to say to hold a contraction for a few minutes straight, you may choose to tense your abdominals for several seconds then pause for a brief moment and tense them for another several seconds. If preferred you can do this when you are feel fresh to achieve a more intense contraction, or you might want to do it at the end of your stomach workout.

Breathing for Fighting
When in the ring, be sure to keep fresh air flowing through your lungs by frequently taking short gulps of air, and then fully exhaling the used air. Do so especially when you are punching or moving. When you punch be sure to tighten your abdomen as a protective measure to ward off the affects of body punches. On another note, with less air in your lungs it’s less likely that you’ll have the wind knocked out of you.

If you find that you need to draw deeper breaths, do so while fully exhaling any spent air. This will delay the onset of fatigue as there will be more fresh air through your body. The only problem with taking deep breaths is that you will become more prone to getting the wind knocked out of you by a well placed blow. Staying out of range would be a better solution to catch your breath than covering up if clinching is not an option. Study the concept of the large and small circle in the ring. A good example is De la Hoya vs. Vargas. De la Hoya was able to play it safe by backpedalling around the large circle. This tactic is employed by many great fighters. This can allow you to recover if you are either dazed or hurt, as mentioned before allow you to get a breather, or like the great fighters would use it to control the fight.

Some Conventional Exercises for the Abs
Although this article is mostly about unconventional exercises, I just thought I’d give a very quick run through of some of the conventional exercises that I find are effective.

Sit ups
Why not? It’s a good exercise that’s been a staple in the regimen of many generations of fighters. There are many variations of this exercise. For more difficulty it can be done on a slant board, a roman-chair, or while holding a light weight.

Leg Raises
It puts more emphasis on the hip flexors, and the lower portion of the abdominals. This exercise can be performed while lying down, holding a pull up bar, or dip bars.

Ab-Wheel
Basically it’s a Wheel with handles. You start in a position either standing and bent over, or kneeling. The simple idea is to extend your body along the floor as far as it will go. It can be very difficult exercise if you are heavy or in less than great condition.

Side Bends
Hence the name, you bend at your sides. This can be done with or without weight. If you are doing this exercise with weight make that you are not bending forwards or backwards as the twisting can be harmful to your spine.

This is to just name a few. There are many other different exercises for the abs out there that are worth doing. One misconception that I want to clear up is the myth that you can isolate a part of your abs. The reality is that whether you do a sit-up, leg-raise, or a side bend, all of your abdominal muscles are all working together. At the most you can only shift some of the tension to part of your abs according to the kind of movement that you are doing.

[size=12pt]One last thing…
Now getting the abdominal muscles into fighting shape isn't the end all and be all, your stance along with some guiding principles will help keep you from taking any unnecessary punishment.

Unless you have a perfectly good reason to do so, don’t stand square to your opponent, this just gives them a bigger menu to pick out of when it comes to your midsection. On the other hand, with a stance that is more slanted towards your opponent, it’ll be easier for you to maintain your defense as you aren’t giving your opponent such a large target.

When rolling inside of an opponent's hooks, be sure keep your elbows close to your body and don’t expose your back to them. When it comes to infighting, do what you got to do and then get out of there. If you don’t have a good reason getting close to your opponent, then don't be there! [/size]

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It's been a while since I posted anything of my own, and this little article has been in the back burners of my mind for a long time.


-Chris