Lori: "How to Get Great Abs"
Upper abdominal Exercises:
 
Abdominal Crunches
 
Lying on your back put your knees up in the air so that your thighs are at a right angle to your torso, with your knees bent. If you like you can rest your feet on something, like a chair. Put your hands either behind your head or gently touching the sides of your head. Slowly raise your shoulders off the ground and try to touch your breastbone to your pelvis, breathing out as you go. Although the actual movement will be very small you should try to go as high as possible. Only your spine should bend, your hips should not move. Do these fairly slowly to avoid using momentum to help. You can increase the difficulty of the exercise by extending your hands out behind your head instead of keeping them at the side. Make sure you don't jerk your hands forward to help with the crunch, keep them still.
 
1/4 Crunches
 
Same as an abdominal crunch except that you raise your shoulder up, instead of pulling them toward your pelvis. You can do these quickly, in fact it's hard to do them any other way.
 
Cross-Knee Crunches
 
Like abdominal crunches, take the lying, bent-knee position, but this time crunch diagonally so that you try to touch each shoulder to the opposite hip alternately. At the top position, one shoulder and one hip should be off the ground.
 
Pulldown Crunches
 
Drape a towel or rope around the bar of a pulldown machine so that you pull the weight using it instead of the bar. Kneel facing the machine and grab hold of the towel and put your hands against your forehead. Kneel far enough away from the machine so that the cable comes down at a slight angle.
 
The exercise is the same movement as an abdominal crunch, but using the weight instead of gravity. The emphasis is still on crunching the abdominal, pulling the breastbone towards the pelvis and making sure you exhale all your air at each contraction.