Name: Ball Crunch and Progressions
Uploaded: 2023-04-26T01:01:04.000Z
Duration: 7 min 29 s
Description: This video will guide you through ball crunch exercises and their progressions, allowing you to strengthen your abdominal muscles. Learn how to unlock the power of ball crunches for lasting ab fitness.

English captions

https://stream.mux.com/yc5VRH2XIppkFB02s02mlmZwCHxjLnZ7EphXsR1fttOrs.m3u8

This video will guide you through ball crunch exercises and their progressions, allowing you to strengthen your abdominal muscles. Learn how to unlock the power of ball crunches for lasting ab fitness.

Introduction to Ball Crunch and Core Engagement

Progression Techniques for Enhanced Core Stability

Dynamic Core Exercises with Weight and Rotation

Incorporating Reactive Drills for Athletes

Final Thoughts on Crunch Variations and Applications

Ball Crunch and Progressions

This is Brent from the Brookbush Institute coming at you with progressions of a very common exercise, a common exercise I don't actually advocate that often. That's the crunch! However, when you progress it to a ball crunch, all of a sudden we have this exercise that becomes incredibly versatile, as well as doing something very important, which is marry our posterior and anterior oblique subsystems and function. I'm going to have my friend, Mike, come out. Mike's going to show these exercises. I'm going to torture him for about the next five minutes, but I think he's ready for it! Now,  I know a ball crunch is a progression from a floor crunch, but I think this is a progression that you can get into fairly quickly. If you've been doing ball bridges, this should not be that hard of a progression. Mike is going to go ahead and lay back on the ball, but unlike a ball crunch where I had put the ball right between his shoulder blades, this time I want it more on his low back. He's going to have his upper glutes just touching the ball, and it's actually the fact that he can get his glutes up, all of a sudden makes this version of a crunch not so bad. If he has his glutes engaged, I know his iliacus and psoas are reciprocally inhibited, which means now he has to use that anterior oblique subsystem, and he can't cheat with hip flexor dominance. So, all of a sudden, just having somebody keeping glute lock-out, and do a simple crunch, and things are not so easy. I think if you really focus, think, dollar bill between your cheeks, draw in, and come up, a lot of you guys are going to be shaking and this, functionally, doesn't become such a bad exercise. Mike here is a pitcher, think about what the throwing motion requires. A push off from the leg, with rotation, and flexion from the trunk. So our first progression could be flexion, with a little bit of rotation, while keeping this glue lock-out. So we're teaching his posterior and anterior oblique subsystem to come together a bit here. Now, from those progressions, if he can maintain his glute lock-out for a full set, I can start progressing in weight, I can start progressing in complexity or I can start progressing in a way that I'm going to show you guys, where we can work on some dynamic flexibility of the upper body. We're also going to show you guys some reactive drills that are a lot of fun. Now, first things first, let's talk about weight. There's no limit to how big of a medicine ball you can grab. You could even use a dumbbell, providing the glutes stay tight. One of the mistakes I see a lot of people making in core exercise in general, is our rep range. It's 12 to 20 reps for strength to endurance. If you're doing more than 20 reps, it's cardio, and the crunch is not a great selection for cardiovascular exercise. So, let's keep going. If this wasn't heavy enough for him, I'd just go get a bigger ball, or I could continue to progress the exercise in a different way. One thing I don't see enough of is people saying "hey, let's let's start putting some different forces on your core and get you working against a rotational force, or against a longer lever arm". So first, we could start back here, this is also working on some dynamic flexibility of his lats, and then he can come up, and that's a lot harder. Now, why not in a symmetrical force? Let's go ahead and put one hand down, and now he has something trying to rotate him this way, and then if I want to make it really tough, we were trying this before, I'll have them scoot this way towards the wall a little bit, and he can go one hand, but out into a P and F carry way. Now he has all of that load try to flip him right off the ball, and of course he can come up back into his crunch, or maybe even his crunch with rotation. So I could have him come out there, and then as long as he keeps his glutes locked out, have him reach for my hand here. Good. I think you can see, just progressing in these different ways with weight, if he got all of these down,  I can put them all together as a dynamic flexibility warm up. This could be the core exercise in that integrated warm up before he does any of his activity. He could start back, and then he could just follow a clock with his arm.  Now he's got 12 o'clock, and then we're going to go back this way, good, and then back this way. Now we have all of the different fibers of the pectoralis. We have some pec minor in there. All of these different things are getting stretched out, working on that dynamic control at a tempo a little closer to the sport, which of course, in Mike's case, is baseball. I'm going to go ahead and let you sit up for a second, take a rest from here. A lot of the things I like to do involve power, or a little bit of that reactivity. A crunch and catch is a very important exercise if you guys are going to have anybody do that ground smash power exercise. It's probably important to at least get their core strong enough, make sure we're getting good TVA activation, make sure they can control a crunch and catch first, and then Mike and I are going to play a little game to work on his reactivity. Just another great warm-up, pre-sport, for core activity, where I'll show you how to make crunch and catch a lot harder. Let's start two arms first and show them tha, just a standard crunch and catch. This is the exercise, and you can, I don't have enough room on this video, but you can stand pretty far back and launch a ball. I would launch it over his head, this way, so that if he misses it doesn't hit him in the face. You guys can imagine that if I took another 10 feet back, and chest passed it as hard as I could, right back behind his head, and he had to catch it and throw it back, it's going to be great preparation for a maximum power exercise like that ground smash. Now, if I'm just doing this reactive stabilization exercise as a warm-up, we can start thinking about going to one hand. This is a little bit of coordination, a little bit of reactivity. I know my personal trainers out there don't have all athletes as clients, so to make somebody catch with their non-dominant hand can be quite a fun routine. With Mike, since he is a very high-level athlete, I don't have to be nice. So if I want to work on his reactivity, his ability to catch, I can say 'okay, I'm not going to tell them which hand, and I'm just going to throw it anywhere within his reach to make sure, maybe even try to fool him a little bit, just to get him to react to that ball'. You can imagine after 3 sets of 20, after he's done all of his other activation exercises, and then follows this up with some sub system integration, he'll be warm, he'll be ready to go. I hope you enjoyed this video, I hope you see some new things to do with the crunch. I'll talk to you soon.

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Crunch and Catch (Power Exercise Regression):

Generally speaking the Brookbush Institute does not promote "crunches"; however, "crunch and catch on a stability ball" imparts posterior and rotational forces on the trunk and incorporates a 

. The combination of these forces results in a muscle recruitment pattern that is similar to a chop pattern.

Start by having your client/patient sit on a stability ball that is about knee height.

Have them "walk" their feet out and roll down the ball, stopping when the ball is supporting from the top of the 

 are in alignment, and knee flexion angle is approximately 80-90°.

Have the patient assume the top position of a 

Instruct the client/patient to lay back in an isometric crunch position, with hand or hands ready to catch a medicine ball or sandbell.

Cue the client/patient to prepare to "receive" the ball as softly and quietly as possible, eccentrically decelerating the weight by controlling trunk extension and shoulder flexion.

The client/patient should minimize the amount of the time in the amortization phase by quickly returning the ball following the eccentric phase.

Force during the concentric phase should be generated via the upper extremity, as well as trunk flexion and rotation. Note, the patient/client should maintain the top position of a 

Following release of the weight, the client should maintain trunk flexion and the top position of a 

This exercise can be used to introduce core power exercise, as a means of integrating coordination drills into core exercise, or as a regression/pre-requisite exercise before performing the medicine ball power chop described above.

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