Dead Bugs for Life!

Categories: Uncategorized Mar 22, 2014

.....a guest post by Aleks Salkin

“Reach for the sky!”
- Woody from Toy Story

Well, you heard the man! Er, toy. Start reaching! But I’m gonna add a caveat – don’t reach with just your hands. Reach with your legs, too. Why? Because you’ll be setting yourself up for a move that’s too often overlooked but is one of the best primers not only for learning to crawl and perform higher-level cross-lateral movements – movements that will re-invigorate your vestibular system – but is one of few exercises I know of that can gently force your abs to turn on and start working. Yes, I said “gently force”, and no, I wouldn’t have believed “gentle force” was a possibility either. That is, until I started prescribing to all my abdominally amnesic students the exercise in question before picking up any sort of weight. No more did I hear “I can’t feel anything in my abs” during swings, squats, get ups and the like. Instead they all felt their dear abbies, and right away, no less.

So what is this exercise I’m talking about? None other than the dead bug.

For those of you who have already done them, you probably know what a great primer they make for people relearning how to move cross-laterally. For those who already do them, you probably find them pretty easy because, well, they’re pretty easy by their very nature. They’re not a one rep max sort of exercise – they’re meant (among other things) as a wake-up call to your abs to remind them of what their job is – reflexively supporting YOU.

Well, like any good strength aficionado and devotee of weighted resets like weighted crawling and weighted marching, I wanted to see if there was a way to spice up the dead bug and amplify its effects even better. As is often the case, the answer wasn’t adding more and more reps, but rather keeping the reps the same and adding a little bit of weight.

Because I’m cheap (and there are no Indian clubs readily available in Israel), I took it upon myself to find a creative solution to my problem of finding a way to weight down my dead bugs. Fortunately, wine is cheap and plentiful in the Holy Land, so I took it upon myself to drink a couple of bottles and make some makeshift clubs (the things I do for my vestibular system…)

Sure enough, it worked like a charm, and without ruining the movement or turning it into a high tension exercise (as great as they are, it’s not the right idea with resets), my abs fired up reflexively, and far harder than usual. If the regular dead bug could be compared to a song, it was the same song, but louder. And with any song that’s really good, you’ve gotta crank it up.

Why does this wine bottle trick work so well? I was talking to my friend and fellow Original Strength Specialist Josh Halbert and he made a great point: in addition to adding weight, you’re also increasing the leverage just a little bit, but neither is enough to ruin the exercise – just what the doctor ordered.

Check out the video for some bare-bones instructions and get started right away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oairZ-VOAd0

So, how should you fit these into your programming? You’ve got a couple of options.

1) Simply include it as part of your warm-up and have at it, or
2) (my personal favorite) do a few in between set of other exercises that require some level of mid-section recruitment (hint: pretty much EVERY exercise worthy of doing – deadlifts, squats, swings, pullups, military presses – the list goes on) and note how much more effortly your abs fire up. It’s an excellent addition to any feed forward tension exercises such as those listed above for the simple reason that now that the tension is already there, all that’s left for you to do is to amplify it – not even “fill in the blanks”.
Try it out and make note of the change in the feel and performance of some of your favorite exercises. And if you make some fast progress or hit a PR, I wanna hear about it! Drop me a line on Facebook – Aleks “The Hebrew Hammer” Salkin (https://www.facebook.com/alekssalkintraining)

Happy vestibulating, my friends.

Aleks Salkin is an StrongFirst-certified kettlebell instructor (SFG), StrongFirst-certified bodyweight Instructor (SFB), and an Original Strength Specialist. He grew up scrawny, unathletic, weak, and goofy, until he was exposed to kettlebells and the teachings and methodology of Pavel in his early 20s. He is currently based out of Jerusalem, Israel and spends his time spreading the word of StrongFirst and calisthenics, and regularly writes about strength and health both on his website and as a guest author on other websites. Find him online at https://www.alekssalkin.com and train with him in person at the Original Strength Fundamentals workshop at Condition Kettlebell Gym in Atlanta, GA April 12-13 – click here for details: https://www.mcssl.com/SecureCart/ViewCart.aspx?mid=64D8BC9D-A51E-478D-AC87-CFB01E1F9BCF&sctoken=b0b39279d73f4f0390c64bf7477fb69d&bhcp=1

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