Vince Gironda | Bodybuilding Muscle Fitness Trainer | Wild Physique

I recently bought an old collection of bodybuilding magazines from a used book store in our town (I must confess I’m a bodybuilding magazine nut, even on my honeymoon I took my wife around all the newsstand stores in Detroit looking for MuscleMags...I just can’t get enough).

Appears to me looking through these old mags, that you were the first trainer to recommend crunches for abs instead of situps. Now that’s what I call being ahead of your time.

There are also many other things that you recommended years ago that are now widely accepted, yet in those days your ideas seemed to be treated in the mags as radical.

I would like to know if you have found any other abdominal exercises to beat crunches?

There are several really good ab exercises.

The newest is the inverted situp (You need inversion boots for this one). It works the all important lower "groin" abdominal area.

I also like the hanging leg raise from chin bar.

One oldie that will really work and bring out your abs is the horizontal shoulder planche. Permit me to resurrect it. From this day on let it be used more frequently in the gyms around the United States.

The bench planche is a very "telling" exercise and because of its degree of stress, the abdominals quickly react by toning up faster than you can say "Iron Guru".

If it is too difficult for you to perform then make your first attempts with knees bent, tucked in.