Contrary to what you see on every infomercial on TV you don't need any fancy ab machines
to get a great abdominal workout. In fact, you don't even need a single
abdominal machine to have a huge variety of body weight exercises for your
abdominals.
Bench crunches are an 'oldie but goodie' abdominal exercise which simply
require an elevated surface such as a weight bench. The exercise involves
balancing on the bench by lifting your legs up as a counter balance. Once you
achieve balance, you can slowly lower your shoulders back, moving your legs
(legs will move downward, below the level of the bench) to retain the balanced
position. Once you lower your shoulders as close as possible towards the bench
you can perform the abdominal crunch back up to the original position.
You can do bench crunches with your body lined up with the bench when you
begin this exercise as you are able to fall backwards without falling off the
bench. As you get advanced you may want to increase the challenge by performing
the exercise cross bench, your body perpendicular to the bench.
A simple way to increase the difficulty of bench crunches is dependent upon
the placement of your hands. You can increase the difficulty by moving your
hands from being folded across your chest, to behind your head. Adding
resistance to both the feet (using a medicine ball between the legs or ankle
weights) or the hands (holding dumbbells, cable, resistance band, etc.) will
also increase the difficulty of this already difficult abdominal exercise
