Bosu Ball Cable Crunch With Side Bends

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ CableBeginnerIsolation

How to do the bosu ball cable crunch with side bends

  1. Connect a standard handle to each arm of a cable machine, and position them in the most downward position.
  2. Grab a Bosu Ball and position it in front and center of the cable machine.
  3. Lie down on the Bosu Ball with the small of your back arched around the ball. Your rear end should be close to the floor without touching it.
  4. With both hands, reach back and grab the handle of each cable.
  5. With your feet positioned in a wide stance, extend your arms straight out in front of you and in between your knees. Your hands should be at knee level.
  6. Keep your arms straight and in-line with the upward angle of the cable. Elevate your torso in a crunching motion without dropping or bending your arms.
  7. Maintain the rigid position with your arms. Slowly descend back to the starting position with your back arched around the Bosu Ball and your abdominals elongated.
  8. Repeat the same series of movements to failure.
  9. Once you reach failure, keep your abs tight and raise your torso into plank position so your back is elevated off the Bosu Ball.
  10. Lower your arms down to your side; keep them straight. Start doing alternating side bends; reach for your heels! This finishing movement will focus on your obliques.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Every exercise for:Abdominals

How this movement works

One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.

Every exercise using:Cable

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.