Dead Bug
Trains the Abs.
- Equipment
- Bodyweight
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Lie on your back with your arms straight up over your shoulders and your hips and knees bent to a right angle.
- Press the lower back flat into the floor and keep it there. That is the whole exercise.
- Slowly straighten one leg toward the floor while lowering the opposite arm back overhead.
- Stop before the lower back lifts, then return both limbs to the start.
- Repeat with the other arm and leg.
- Breathe out slowly as the limbs travel away from you.
Common mistakes
- Letting the lower back lift as the leg goes out. That is the point at which the abdominal wall stopped holding, and going past it trains nothing but the range.
- Moving quickly. Speed lets momentum carry the limbs, and it hides the moment the back comes off the floor.
- Taking the leg all the way down because that is what the picture shows. The range belongs to whoever can hold the back flat, and it lengthens over weeks.
- Holding the breath to hold position. Keeping the abdominal wall tight while breathing normally is most of what this exercise teaches, and it is the same skill a heavy set of anything else asks for.