Nine out of ten questions that I am asked in the gym concern abs. Everybody wants a good workout or some secret attack plan to develop their abs. In fact one of the users on this site was asking me for a good ab workout and this post is partially in response that.
The first thing a person needs to remember about training abs is that the abdominals are in fact muscles just like every other one. They respond to training by being broken down and subsequently rebuilt just like your biceps or your quads. So how should you train your abs? Like every other muscle. I hope I got that through your head. Also, as any other muscle, you train them according to the type results you want i.e high reps, low reps, heavy, light etc.
I myself hardly train abs most of the time. I have found that my obliques get thick and blocky really easy and if I train abs as often as I trained everything else, I would have too thick of a waist. I don’t worry too much about not training them because I feel like they get plenty of work supporting my body on the majority of the rest of the lifting that I do.
When I do feel as though my abs are becoming a limiting factor to the rest of my development (which is the downside of not training them at times) I start training them again. In this case I train abs twice a week with 6-8 sets per work out ( 12-16 sets total per week, about the same max volume as the rest of my body parts). The reason I split abs into two shorter workouts is to try and limit their growth but not really their strength. As far as I am concerned (and it seems to work) six or eight sets at one time is not really enough to cause hypertrophy but it is enough to make your muscles stronger, and this is what I want. One of these types of workouts would generally look something like this:
Kneeling Cable Crunches
2 sets @ weight that causes failure between 6 and 10 reps
Twisting Incline Crunches
2 sets @ weight that causes failure between 12 and 15 reps
Hanging Leg Raises
2 sets x failure
V-Ups
2 sets x 10-15 slow and controlled
My second ab workout in the week would be similar but I might have switched the exercises around, placed more emphasis on obliques or lower abs or what have you, but it would be about the same overall effort. You can see here that I use the same types of rep ranges as I do every other part. You have to hit every type of fiber your muscle from varied angles to fully develop a muscle and to do this one must subject their muscles to different levels of tension intensity and duration. With the type of ab work out I just described anyone can develop a good set of abs. Of course the workout I just wrote up is for me and my abs grow easy. What if they don’t? Change your workout to make them grow. You could do all 12 sets in one workout. You might do more heavy sets than light sets. And, in all likelihood, you would also train your abs with the same frequency as the rest of your other muscle groups. Anyway the point is if you are going to train abs don’t just hammer away with set after set of 5,000 sloppy crunches. Train them intelligently and with a diverse selection of rep ranges, weights and exercises.
Showing them off is where a lot of people get really confused. You don’t get a six pack by doing more crunches, you get one by removing the fat that is covering up the abs that you built with those aforementioned workouts. This requires diet and cardio. Remember you’ve got to build some muscle and then remove the fat that covers it, thats what being ripped is all about.
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