28 day no equipment ab challenge

This was a challenge I created for myself to try and develop some ab strength for my running. It focuses on muscular endurance as I was noticing some weakness in my running technique toward the end of long runs and decided it was down to not focusing enough training on my abs. So I did these exercises each day for 28 days on top of my normal training to try and build some strength and tone them up.

This is before the challenge. I started off with a good base, I just needed a little more strength and endurance. Love my little motivation board in the background there!

This isn't the best photo, but you can see the change in definition along the edge of my abs

I know nowadays we are told that there are much better exercises to do than the basics used throughout history like crunches, setups or press ups because there so called new exercises that claim to work every muscle in your body and burn more calories. But this isn't what I was going for so I kept it very simple. I also kept the same number of repetitions each day so that I could easily measure my progress in how difficult I found it to complete.

Exercises:

50 crunches
30 twisting crunches on each side
60 Russian twists

I quite struggled the first time I tried this and wondered whether I may be aiming a little high, but I stuck with it and am glad I did because my endurance improved so much over the 4 weeks I continued, so much so that I incorporate this every time I go to the gym because it has improved my distance running so much!

No one can say they don't have time for this challenge, it took a maximum of 10 minutes and doesn't contain any equipment of difficult moves. Share your results and good luck <3

Love Helen xx