Do you always do traditional crunches to work your middle zone? As we already told you before, traditional abdominals or crunches are not the best option when training your abdomen . Other exercises, such as plates, may be more useful and have a lower risk of injury.

So that you can work your abdomen in your own home and without risks, we bring you five exercises that train your middle zone and that you can practice anywhere , take note!

Frontal and lateral abdominal plank

Perhaps the best known exercise to work all the muscles of our core is the abdominal plank , an isometric exercise (does not imply movement) that improves the tone of the deep muscles of the abdomen, key to maintain a correct posture and improve the health of our back

Lying on the floor, we place our hands directly under the shoulders and lean only on the palms of our hands, and on the tips of our feet. The most important thing is that our body forms a straight line (respecting the natural curvature of the spine) without the hip falling to the floor and without raising the hip towards the ceiling .

One of the variations of this exercise that we can easily perform is the lateral plate, in short periods of time so as not to compromise the safety of the shoulder. If we feel discomfort in the wrists we can use some supports such as those used in Yoga and Pilates .

Woodchopper with water bottles

If with the plates we have worked our abdomen in a static way, with the woodchoppers or lumberjacks we train this area dynamically . This exercise can be done with an external weight (such as a bottle of water) or simply with our own body weight.

We stand with our legs open to the width of the hip and the idea is to make a diagonal movement from the tip of the right foot to place the hands above the head to our left, and then in reverse.

With this exercise, which we can perform from top to bottom or from bottom to top, we work our central area on the three planes of movement , thus achieving a complete training.

Commando planks

One of the hardest variations of the abdominal plates are the commando planks , which involve movement of the arms while the rest of the body remains static.

We start from the frontal plank position and, while maintaining our body forming a straight line without the hip falling, we go from the doll support to the forearm support (first one hand and then the other, of course).

Superman in quadrupedia

A stabilization exercise that involves a good job in our central area and that we can carry out anywhere. With this exercise , we also improve our coordination, our body control and our body awareness.

We start from quadruped position (on all fours) with hands placed directly below the shoulders and knees directly below the hip. Keeping the hip and shoulder girdle in a neutral position , we raise the right hand and the left leg so that they form a straight line and hold the posture for a few seconds.

The most important thing in this exercise, besides being able to maintain the posture, is to avoid the swing of the pelvis and the shoulder girdle to the sides. The axial elongation can be a good help to carry it out correctly.

Mountain climbers

One more variation of the plates, in this case providing movement through the legs . From the front plate position, we bring our right knee close to the chest to return again to its place and perform the same movement with the left knee.

Depending on our level , we can perform the exercise slowly or giving it more movement and rhythm, with greater speed in leg changes.

The challenge in this exercise is to always keep the hip at a suitable height , forming a straight line with our back and without raising the hip excessively towards the ceiling.