Rope Crunch
Trains the Abs.
- Equipment
- A cable station
- Mechanic
- Isolation
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Clip a rope to a high pulley and kneel a step back from the machine.
- Take an end in each hand and bring your hands to either side of your head.
- Sit back slightly so the cable is under tension, with your hips fixed.
- Curl your ribs down toward your hips, rounding the upper back.
- Stop where the trunk stops flexing and hold for a moment.
- Return under control until you are upright, without letting the stack drop.
Common mistakes
- Folding at the hips rather than curling the spine. Bowing forward with a straight back is a hip movement the cable will happily let you do at any weight; the ribs travelling toward the hips is the exercise.
- Pulling with the arms. The hands stay beside the head and the rope comes down because the trunk did; arms doing the work is why some people feel this in the shoulders.
- Letting the hips travel back as you curl. The hips are the anchor; if they move, the range comes from somewhere other than the abdominal wall.
- Loading it heavily and shortening the range. The distance between ribs and hips is short to begin with, and a heavier stack that halves it trains less rather than more.