Like a bowlful of jelly.

June 15, 2007 9:53 AM

When I work my abs a lot, I get little mini shaky spasms, similar to what your muscles do after lifting, except they last for a while, say 24 hours, give or take, as opposed to up to two hours or so after weightlifting. Does this happen to you too? Is it common?

Generally, it is the muscles up around the edge of the ribs, from the solar plexus to halfway down. It is not the muscles right at the top under the skin, but buried a little. I can feel it through my skin though.

It doesn't hurt at all, but I think it is odd and wondered how widespread it is. My ab work includes dryland (crunches, planks, some pilates stuff), and swimming, especially fly. Does it last longer because my abs are weak?

posted by dame to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

I get it too when I am working my core muscles but it went away when the exercises got too easy/light for me. At that point, my trainer will add more weight or somehow make it more difficult.
posted by spec80 at 10:16 AM on June 15, 2007

I get the same thing, too, only if I work the abs really hard.
posted by vytae at 11:18 AM on June 15, 2007

I think it lasts longer because your core supports nearly all positions. You continue to engage your core through most of your awake time, meaning that it doesn't get the break that other parts of you body get, and probably takes longer to recover as a result.
posted by carmen at 1:02 PM on June 15, 2007

I have a little spasm that happens with a certain small part of an ab muscle. It occurs randomly, below the surface as you described. I asked my doctor about it when it was happening a lot - even managed to get him to feel it when it randomly happened while I was in the office. He didn't think it was a serious thing, and most likely it's just a trigger-happy neuromuscular junction or something.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:53 PM on June 15, 2007

Muscle spasms could be a sign of overtraining. How much ab work are you doing? Most people do silly stuff like 1000 sets of 1,000,000 reps every day or every other day. Anything close to this is very likely way too much.

A few heavy sets twice a week is perfectly fine. Abs are a muscle like any other muscle and should be trained similarly. While they may recover faster than say your chest or quads, they can still be overtrained.
posted by creative at 7:37 AM on June 16, 2007