Abs Workout with a Foam Roller - Not just for recovery

Hi everyone, it's Lunden and welcome back here to the Runtastic Fitness Channel. I have brought my friend again the foam roller and you might remember a while back actually a couple years back toward the beginning of the Runtastic Fitness Channel, I made a recovery video using the foam roller where we released our tight muscle and we did a lot of recovery exercises and a lot of you said "Ouch that really hurt!" And I know it really does hurt to use a foam roller for recovery and today I'm going to teach you how to use the foam roller for an abs workout. So that way if you bought a foam roller for recovery you have more variety and more things that you can do with a single piece of equipment. Which is really important if you're going to invest in something even if it's a foam roller. It's cool to have different options of different things that you can do. So I have this black and orange foam roller and it's a little bit smaller than the one I used in the previous video, but it really doesn't matter. This one's actually cool because you can fit in your gym bag or in your suitcase or something like that if you're traveling. But today I have four moves for your abs. You are going to work your abs with this very light piece of equipment. It looks harmless but it's going to work your abs today. I have 4 moves for you we're gonna get started right now. Okay so the first one is the atomic crunch and if you watched my ab exercise video with an exercise ball we did something similar but we're going do it with a foam roller now. So, you're going to put your shins on the foam roller and you're gonna come into a plank position just like this. You want to make sure that your core is engaged and your lower back isn't arching like this. You want to keep everything nice and tight, ok? Then you're going to bring your knees all the way in and all the way out and you're really going to work those abs with this movement. You want to keep everything nice and tight and ensure that your hands are directly underneath your shoulders. And just go in and out, just like that. So that's the first one that's the atomic crunch with the foam roller. The second one we're going to do is a Russian twist. You're going to come onto the ground here, knees bent, feet flat. First let's start off with just activating the core making sure that you're not hunching over like this. Your shoulders are down and away from your ears you're gonna hold onto the foam roller like this. Put it out in front of you shoulders down and just lean back. Now for some people, this motion might be enough. You might feel it here and you can't do anything else and that's totally okay. But when the Russian twist comes into play, we're going to twist side to side just like this. Twist and twist. You wanna make sure that your legs aren't rocking side to side. When you do this motion everything is nice and stable except for your arms which are moving side-to-side and of course your abs which are twisting like this like a dish towel that you're wringing out to dry. For the third move, actually the third and the fourth move, you're going to come down onto your back. Ok so first we're gonna do a scissor kick with an added twist using the foam roller. So you lay on your back, legs all the way up towards the ceiling. First we'll start with the leg motion so you're just going do this and you want to make sure that your lower back is pressed to the mat and not arched. So you're only going to drop this leg down as far as you can until your low back start starts to arch. If you start arching your back like this, than you want to just decrease the range of motion, ok? But if you feel like you're more advanced, you can do this. Then with the foam roller you're going to cross over that leg. So, my right leg is up and I'm crossing over to the right leg, okay? Side to side. That's the scissor kick and twist. And the last one is the Pass back. We're going to start with the foam roller between your feet you're going to lengthen and reach your hands all the way up over your head and then past it to your hands and then do the same thing. Same rules apply with the scissor kicks, if your low back starts to arch you just bring your legs a little bit higher but if you have really strong core and your low back is strongly pressed into the mat, then you can just go all the way down just like that. I am already feeling it and I didn't even do that many. But there you have it, 4 moves for your abs that you can do using a foam roller. You can use it for recovery and you can also use it for training. Make sure to take a moment and give me a thumbs up if you liked this video. Click the thumb that looks like this and let me know if you like this video because it's really important. I have to know that what I'm putting out there you guys like. So I will see you next time and let me know if you try these exercises!