CRUNCHES

Follow along with Andrew Dettelbach for some quick tips on how to properly perform MonkeyFoot crunches. Please use a weight that is most comfortable for you.

Monkeyfoot crunches, a couple of variations here, straight leg, much more intense. Or bent knee bent arm, crunching in. You're going to want to use a weight in both the hands and the foot. If you only have one Monkeyfoot, you’ll have to do both sides. If you have two Monkeyfeet, you just save time. So, to start off we’re going to find a little bit of a hollow position here, neutral lower back, kind of gently pressing into the floor, like if there was a bug there, you're not going to kill it, but you're touching it with your back, the ribs are pulled in, and we’re going to start with the harder variation, so straight leg and reaching that heel to the wall, reaching my fists to the wall, and then I’m going to lift through, reaching up toward that foot, and then back down. You don’t have to curl all the way up, if this is as high as you want to go perfectly fine, just a little bit of a lift, that works. You want to make sure that you are exhaling as you're lifting. Full exhale is going to get that transversus abdominis pulled in so that you’re not bulging your belly outward when you're doing these exercises. 

Now if the straight leg is too difficult, you're going to be lifting that leg up, bending the elbows, curling in toward one another, and back down, nice and slow. It isn't about how many repetitions you do, the speed and the intention of the activation of your abdominals is going to determine how many you're going to do. Nice and slow, you're going to get a lot more out of this than cranking through a bunch of reps. And, even this is just 5lbs 5lbs, I'm on fire, so you don’t need a lot of weight here. 

Animalhouse Fitness
2707 Boeing Way
Stockton, California
95206