Susan Foster: Hi! I am Susan Foster. I am founder of New Attitude Exercise. Now we're going to talk about abdominal crunches in chest deep water, effective techniques and ineffective techniques. In chest deep water you can get some wonderful abdominal work done. It's a lot easier than doing it on land, in a sweaty gym. But technique is everything.

You can practice this before you get in the pool. Think thumbs, think pinkies. Take your thumbs, hold on to your bottom rib, put your pinkies on your hips. Breath out and fold the ribs to the hips. That's an abdominal curl, breath in, relax, breath out, curl the ribs over to the hips, breath out and relax.

Every time you should be thinking ribs to the hips, ribs to the hips. As you round, your whole back should look like the letter C. If you've ever seen people just doing this, it's not abdominal work. There are some muscles that run from the front of the thighs into the back, so they think they're doing abdominal work, but they're really missing the boat.

Now we're in chest deep water. You've got your ribs to be your hips rhythm going. So use a noodle this will help you really feel it. It's called the tuck and fake. So first do the tuck, back around and you round the shoulders.

You feel like you're going to put the noodle under your feet but the last minute you fake it, change your mind, release, good. Breath out, curl the ribs to the hips, round and release. The natural buoyancy of the water will give you plenty of time to execute this very clearly. So take your time, really feel the belly rounding.

Now you're getting a lot of good work on the upper abdominal muscles, lower abdominal muscles and transversus abdominis. Next let's cruise on over to the deep end and do some really effective work for your oblique abdominals.