Lower Ab problems!!! Help please!

Please please someone help me! I'm a 15 year old girl and I've been recently dieting and working out (a little). I have to admit my frame is bigger than most girls around my age who are all anorexic sticks. I weigh 115 right now, I was 128 about a month or so ago. I did lose a lot of weight, but my lower abs (the part of my stomach below my naval) are awful! Every time I look at an ab workout, I can never understand it at all and it doesn't do me a bit of good. Does anyone know of any simple, step-by-step, do-at-home-without-any-tools exercises for my poor lower abs??

Another problem area are my thighs and waistline. Will running and walking work? I do walk a lot..

[Cougar]

Okay, first of all, if you're fifteen and weigh 115, you almost certainly don't need to diet much if at all. Especially not if your frame is fairly large- how tall are you?

If you want your various bits to be firm and toned, you need to do some kind of resistance training. The other upside of resistance training is that muscle burns calories like fire burns kindling, so the more of it you have, the easier it is to lose fat and keep it off. Since I started with this stuff, I look leaner but my appetite has practically doubled. (And yes, I'm female.) Don't worry about getting too big; you won't. It's really damn HARD to get big.

Hanging leg lifts are fabulous for the lower section of your abs, if you can find a place to hang from. If you can find something to support your weight on- anything you can substitute for a chinup bar or a dip station (those look like parallel bar setups). Assuming you can, hang there and use your abs to pull your legs up; think flexing your hips outward and upward to pull the lower half of your body up. You'll know you're doing it right when you feel the effort just over your groin- at the bottom portion of your abs. If you can keep yourself stable, you can do these on your back too- that's how I got around the no-bar problems. I lie on my back, cross my legs at the ankle, and use (mostly) my abs to pull my hips and legs up until my legs are straight and my toes pointing at the ceiling, with me balancing on my upper body. It's not as good, but it works.

Here's an FAQ on abs:
http://www.timbomb.net/ab/ab-top.html

And here's a link on how to improvise good resistance training when you don't have any equipment:
http://www.stumptuous.com/noweights.html

Good luck, and remember this: Guys like curvy, healthy-looking girls a whole lot more than they like sticks. Speaking as the only girl in my class to go through high school without dieting, I know. (I weighed about five or ten pounds more than you.)

[Lee J B]

you go girls ( hehehe )

[Piper]

Britney... you could try weighted crunches...

Basically... a normal crunch (sit up) only you hold a book or weight or something to your upper body... it intensifies the burn, which speeds up results, getting you a slimmer stomach and harder firmer abs...

[MsFit]

First rule of abs: Abs are built in the kitchen, clean eating.

Second rule: Training accordingly. The abdomial muscle is one muscle and it contracts as one muscle. So trying to train one part of it will be difficult. The reason training the lower abdominals is tough is because there is not much there. The abs are thick above the navel, but below the navel the abs are not much more than a thin muscular wall and connective tissue. Another reason is that the spine can flex in the upper abdominal region, causing the abs to contract, but not much in the lower abdominal area. The reason, the pelvis is in the way. Good news though; Since your spine can flex, only a small amount, when you roll your hips up toward you, it is possible to get the lower abdominal region to do more work than usual when performing an exercise like reverse crunches. Minimize involvement of the hip flexor, which is a troublemaker when training abdominals. The hip flexors assist the abs in moving the trunk toward the legs. Since the hip flexors are stronger, the abs never get much of a chance to work when hip flexors are contracting. To sum it up, if you want to train abs, then just train abs – not the hip flexors. When you start moving the hip (leg raises, knee raises and sit-ups) the abdominals are no longer the primary movers and won’t do much work. A simple way to effectively target the lower abs is the torso lift. Lie on the floor and raise your feet, putting your body in the “L” position. Now, using your lower abs, lift your trunk off the floor. This is a small movement, not much more than a few inches. Another effective exercise to target the lower abs is to lie on the floor and cross your legs Indian Style and crunch up, pulling from your lower abdominal region. This position isolates the abs.
MsFit

[Piper]

sounds like something from the Karma Sutra.

[MsFit]

Actually, it's Shotokan
MsFit

[cursor]

MsFit's reply is extremely well explained and greatly appreciated. Thanks for the quality info

[galileo]

Originally posted by MsFit
Actually, it's Shotokan
MsFit

Nooooo, not shotokan! Noooooo! *runs and hides from your esoteric dance*

[Lee J B]

I used to do shotokan for 8 years, i got to purple-white. All the Kata's and complicated moves got too much for me and i took up bodybuilding. However shotokan leaves you with an extremely high level of fitness, tone and the ability to dedicate yourself to anything, doing a kata infront of a panal of 7 judges of the EMA Association G.B was the most terryfying time of my life. Especially when one of them judges is your best mate who is a 3rd Dan Black Belt, i was literally ****ting myself hehehe

[Piper]

i was literally ****ting myself

That surely can't make you look good. No wonder you started bodybuilding... lol