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Many of you bros reading this are probably getting ready to take off for spring break.
This means you’re going to spend a week getting shit faced off cheap beer and rubbing alcohol while making stupid decisions that hopefully your friends will never let you forget.
You may not remember much of your spring break, but you know what you want to look good.
Hopefully, you’ve been putting in the work to get jacked so you look like The Rock walking the beach.
But if you’re looking to take things up a notch then it’s time you ditch the leg raises and the ab wheel, and start doing the cable crunch:
The cable crunch is by far and away one of the greatest ab exercises for building true abdominal strength and size.
I love it because you can load it more than any other ab exercise like ab wheel rollouts, leg raises, or others.
Obviously we know that when you’re able to load an exercise, that means it’s going to have a higher potential to build more size and strength, and the cable crunch is no exception.
The cable crunch is unmatched when it comes to building big and strong abs.
Now, you may be wondering why the fuck you’d want big abs, right?
One of the biggest benefits of building bigger abs though is the fact that your abs will start showing quicker, even when you’re carrying more body fat.
If you’ve got atrophied abdominals that only work when you do compound lifts, you’re likely going to need to be sub 10% body fat to start having a really appreciable definition in your midsection.
If you’ve trained your abs though, and build a strong abdominal wall, this isn’t going to be the case.
You could be 12-13% and see the outline of your abs.
Let’s stop and acknowledge just how big of a deal that is. You can the same level of definition in your midsection, while carrying more body fat. It’s like cheating the game.
So yeah, you need to be doing the cable crunch.
How to do the cable crunch.
This is an ab exercise that gets fucked up more often Johnny Football.
Most of the people trying it lack the necessary core stability and strength to even get in position and perform a proper cable crunch.
In the video above you’ll see that my thighs stay perpendicular to the floor, and this is by design.
I like to keep my thighs in that position, because it allows me to flex and extend my spine more, meaning I get a bigger stretch and contraction in my abs.
The bigger the stretch and contraction, the more effective the movement, especially under heavy loads.
Now, obviously that much flexion and extension of the spine isn’t a great thing when we’re talking about most exercises, especially heavy compound exercises.
It’s important to remember that the cable crunch is probably something you’re going to be doing 2-3x a week max, and for 6-9 total sets max.
Even at the heaviest setting, the weight stack will allow, that’s typically not enough load to cause serious damage.
To piggyback off that point, if you’ve been lifting properly, then your spine and the surrounding muscles are going to be strong enough that this shouldn’t even be an issue you need to worry about.
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