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Workout 101: Sculpt Your Abs with Blake Harrison

By Robyn Hagan Cain
Blake Harrison has this ab thing down. Photos by <a href="http://www.kimlucian.com">Kim Lucian</a>
Blake Harrison has this ab thing down. Photos by Kim Lucian

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Is this the year that you're working toward killer abs, glutes, or arms? Are you at a loss for where to start? Blake Harrison has a few suggestions that can get you on the right track. Blake, the ripped dude who won the men's round in last year's Hottest Trainer competition, sat down with Racked for a step-by-step guide to some of his favorite workouts. The best part: You can do all of these at home with little or no equipment. This week, he's giving us the inside scoop on abs. As you can see, Blake clearly knows his stuff.

Upper Ab Isolation: Crunches are a great way to work the upper abs that you associate with a six pack.

Step 1:To begin this subtle crunch, lie on your back. Keep your arms straight and form a diamond with your thumbs and forefingers. Your palms will be facing the ceiling.

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Step 2: Drawing your belly button in towards the spine, lift your shoulders 2-3 inches off the floor for a 5 second hold. Lower your shoulders back to the ground, and repeat.

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Lower Ab Press: When you finish with the upper abs, it's time to move on to the lower abs. Leg lifts will challenge the lower abdominals.

Step 1: Start lying flat on your back. Rest your hands, palms down, at your sides. With your feet together, raise your legs to a 90-degree angle with the floor.

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Step 2: Press your palms into the floor, and lift your hips, driving your feet toward the ceiling.

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Step 3: At the highest point, your legs will form a 60-70 degree angle with your torso. From that point, slowly lower your hips back to the ground and repeat.

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Your abdominal muscles form a natural corset that supports internal organs, improves your posture, and tightens your waistline. Blake recommends two exercises to work that corset: the plank pull-through and the corset recruitment.

Plank pull-through:

Step 1: Start in a forearm plank. Make sure that your core is engaged.

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Step 2: Drive your hips upward into a slight pike, pulling your belly button in toward your spin. Imagine that you have a string attached to your spine, and feel the spine pulling through the shoulder blades to engage the abs as you raise your hips. Lower back to your plank and repeat.


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Corset recruitment:

Step 1: Start in a forearm side plank with your hip toward the floor.

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Step 2:Drive the elbow away from the body, lifting the hip back toward the ceiling. The corset muscles engage at the highest point in this move. Hold the pose. Slowly lower down, and repeat.

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A different view on corset engagement:

To perfect this movement, focus on attaching your lats (the muscles just below the shoulder blades) to your core. To use hyper technical terms, you should feel the lats scrunching as you lower your hip.)

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Alternate view of the top of the motion. See? No scrunching.

For a quick ab routine, aim for one minute on each move. If you're still hungry for more Blake Fit tips, Blake will be back next week with moves to amp up your arms.

· Blake Fit [Official Site]

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