'Home exercises' to remove an 'alcohol belly'.

[semi-pro waster]

Have to admit, I tried those last night, and I was struggling to keep my body rigid, my legs always got upright before my torso left the bench . How did you build enough core strength to do those?

I would guess that you could help by doing specific exercises such as planks, hanging/captains chair leg raises, bicycle etc but performing good compound exercises well (squats, deadlifts, pull-ups) will probably help more with core strength although I'm happy to be corrected on that.

 

[Jonny L]

I would guess that you could help by doing specific exercises such as planks, hanging/captains chair leg raises, bicycle etc but performing good compound exercises well (squats, deadlifts, pull-ups) will probably help more with core strength although I'm happy to be corrected on that.

Awesome, cheers for the advice, I'm going to try doing those again in a few months and see if I can even do 1 haha.

 

[sigma]

Have to admit, I tried those last night, and I was struggling to keep my body rigid, my legs always got upright before my torso left the bench . How did you build enough core strength to do those?

Could you go up half way? So like 45 degrees off the ground?

 

[Volcs]

Could you go up half way? So like 45 degrees off the ground?

Well that angle is pretty much the toughest point so wouldn't really advise that.

I've never really done any isolated ab work before giving these a go so as already mentioned stick to the big compounds supplemented with iso stuff if you feel it's required.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Could you go up half way? So like 45 degrees off the ground?

I don't know if you've tried dragon flags but for me the most difficult part is the initial part because you're dealing with the leverage of lifting almost the entire length of your body, once you get up beyond a certain point then you've shortened the effective leverage to the pivot point (your shoulders) because your body is raised i.e. you've gone from trying to lift
|-------PP
to
|-
**-
***-
****-PP
which means you don't have the same leverage of weight working against you(with | to represent feet and PP the pivot point, please imagine the asterixes aren't there but it's to create formatting).

 

[Volcs]

I don't know if you've tried dragon flags but for me the most difficult part is the initial part because you're dealing with the leverage of lifting almost the entire length of your body, once you get up beyond a certain point then you've shortened the effective leverage to the pivot point (your shoulders) because your body is raised i.e. you've gone from trying to lift
|-------PP
to
|-
**-
***-
****-PP
which means you don't have the same leverage of weight working against you(with | to represent feet and PP the pivot point, please imagine the asterixes aren't there but it's to create formatting).

Or start from upright if you fancy a bit of cheating

 

[WantoN]

If you've got a training buddy, negatives will be a very effective way to build up. The hardest point will be when the muscles are at lowest contraction (full extended) and furthers from the pivot point, ie when you are inches from the ground.

The strength and control demonstrated in those vids is immese. The exercise, incidentally was made famous by Bruce Lee, hence the 'Dragon' flags. His training methodology was just awesome

Ant

 

[sigma]

I don't know if you've tried dragon flags but for me the most difficult part is the initial part because you're dealing with the leverage of lifting almost the entire length of your body, once you get up beyond a certain point then you've shortened the effective leverage to the pivot point (your shoulders) because your body is raised i.e. you've gone from trying to lift

Ah, I think I may have got slightly confused. I don't quite follow your diagrams.

I've not tried dragon flys as such, but what I meant (and what i've recently started doing again) is just lying on the floor and raising legs but not torso.

We used to do it when I was training in martial arts.

Lifting legs to 45 degrees or above then lowering to a couple of centimeters above the ground then raising up again, then back down but holding legs out for 30 seconds, then back up and down etc.

Edit - pretty much as WantoN has said above, but not the whole torso as in the video posted.