Abdominal (Core) Training for Great Six-Pack Abs

Having visibly appealing abs - the so-called "six-pack" - has almost nothing to do with training abs! The key to seeing your abs is low body fat. Someone with very muscular abs who has high body fat will not see any definition, and someone who has not trained their abs at all with low body fat will see plenty of definition. In order to see abs, most men have to reach at least 10% body fat or lower, while women must reach 14% or lower.

The abdominal muscle is a large slab of muscle. The shape of the six-pack is due to tendons that stretch across the muscle. You cannot change a tendon's size, position, or shape through training, so the shape of your six-pack will not change.

Protruding Abdominals?

Abdominal muscles bulge in their relaxed state. The abdominal wall is pulled flat when it contracts. If you improperly train abs, either by training to add significant mass and/or by neglecting other supporting muscles, your abs will protrude. You can see this in certain sports, such as professional wrestling - certain athletes is so lean that you can see their six-pack, but their stomach protrudes as if they have a beer gut! While it is possible to store fat internally (i.e. "beer gut") and still have little fat underneath the skin, this condition is more than likely due to overtraining the abdominal wall while neglecting supporting muscles.

Ab Muscle: The Pelvic Girdle

The pelvic girdle is a group of internal muscles that support your internal organs. When you perform abdominal work, your internal organs can shift and change your center of gravity. This is most evident when someone is performing hanging leg or knee raises and begins swinging.

By engaging the pelvic girdle during abdominal training, you not only strengthen your center of balance, but force more tension on the abdominal wall.

The pelvic girdle is tightened by clenching your insides - squeezing your rectum or performing the same action as cutting off the flow of urine. This exercise is known as the Kegel, and men as well as women can perform these. By performing a Kegel during abdominal work, you ensure not only that the pelvic girdle is strengthened at the same time, but also that you are building a strong core or center of balance.

A proper hanging knee raise or leg raise will result in no swinging whatsoever - the torso will remain still and movement will be only around the pelvic area and through the legs.

Ab Muscle: Transversus

The transversus is another internal muscle that serves to pull the abdominal wall back. The transversus is contracted when you suck in your gut or try to pull your belly through your lower back.

If you work your abdominal wall without working your transversus, the abdominal wall may increase in mass and begin to bulge or protrude. By keeping your stomach pulled in and tight during abdominal training, you strengthen the transversus at the same time.

You can also perform an exercise known as the "vacuum" frequently to further strengthen the transversus - vacuums (where you simply pull in your gut and keep it pulled in while breathing slowly) can be performed while driving or even standing in line at the supermarket.

Ab Muscle: Obliques

The obliques are muscles that run diagonally across the abdominal wall and are attached to bone at your sides. Increasing the size of your obliques can increase the width of your waist, but not necessarily the circumference.

These are "muscular love handles." Some people avoid training obliques for that reason. There are many sports-specific applications for working the obliques - contact sports such as football require the ability to maintain balance while twisting, and strong obliques are critical for this. Because obliques cross over the abdominal wall, having strong obliques means that your abdominal wall will be pulled flat (as with the transversus). Therefore, while training obliques may increase the width of your waist, it can also serve to pull your stomach flatter!

Ab Muscle: Spinal Erectae

The spinal erectae are a group of muscles that support the lower back and spine. They work in conjunction with the abdominal wall, obliques, and transversus, similar to the way that the biceps and triceps or deltoids and lat muscles work together.

Neglecting your spinal erectae can result in an imbalance that will pull at your spine and cause lower back pain. Effective back exercises that should be balanced with abdominal training include good mornings, hyperextensions, and dead-lifts.

No Need to Overtrain

The abdominal wall and supporting muscles are not "special" in the sense that they require constant training. Because these muscles form your core strength and stabilize your torso, almost any activity will work these muscles - from a bench press to running. Therefore, the notion that they need to be trained every day is flawed.

Train Only Once or Twice a Week

Training your core once or twice a week should be sufficient. Because the core muscle group does contract constantly to stabilize your torso, these muscles typically contain more "endurance" fiber - this means that higher repetition training may be beneficial. By higher rep training, I'm referring to the 12 - 15 rep range.

Performing 50 - 100 crunches simply means that you are using other muscles such as the hip flexors and not isolating the core muscles appropriately. When you isolate the core muscles, perform a vacuum and a Kegel, and balance training of the abdominal wall with the lower back, you can build strong, functional core strength using only body weight and moderate reps.

Add some well-balanced nutrition and 2 - 3 cardio sessions per week, and you'll be well on your way to a well-defined "six-pack"!

The Comprehensive Ab Routine

I recommend a standard core strength routine that fits itself to almost everyone. The reason this fits most people is due to various levels. You begin with the first level and work your way forward. Most people will not get past the first few levels for several months. It can take a trained athlete months and possibly years to reach the final level, depending on their existing core strength.

The following table is a "key" to each level:

Level, Exercises

I,Crunch,Crunch,Crunch

II,Crunch,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise

III,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise,Hanging Knee Raise

IV,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise,Hanging Knee Raise,Parallel Leg Raise

V,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise,Parallel Leg Raise,Parallel Leg Raise

VI,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise,Parallel Leg Raise,Parallel Leg Raise,Full Leg Raise

VII,Crunch,Hanging Knee Raise,Parallel Leg Raise,Full Leg Raise,Inverted Scissors

The instructions are simple. Begin with level 1. Attempt to perform 15 repetitions for each set. You rest exactly 1 minute between sets. For level 1, you attempt 3 sets of 15 floor crunches. If you succeed in completing the entire level, then you advance to the next level. Only when you can successfully complete 15 continuous reps of each exercise prescribed do you advance to the next level. This may seem simple. In practice, however, it is very difficult.

Here are a few guidelines for performing these exercises:

Practice pulling your stomach in and keeping it in. Imagine pulling your belly button through your lower back. This will be referred to as a "vacuum". This is very important, because it engages the transversus muscle, a muscle underneath your abdominal muscle. Without engaging this muscle, which is responsible for pulling your stomach flat, your abs will begin to protrude!
Learn what a Kegel is. In simple terms, this is the contraction you make when squeezing your insides or stopping the flow or urine. While it is commonly known amongst women who have given birth to children, men can actually perform this exercise as well. When you clench your insides, you stabilize your pelvic girdle, which holds all of your organs. This will stabilize your center of balance.
Maintain the vacuum and Kegel throughout the duration of every set! If you cannot hold both for the entire time, make sure you "reset" or start a new vacuum and Kegel with every rep (i.e. if you lose one or the other during rep 5, reset them at the beginning of rep 6 and keep going).

You can easily perform these exercises hanging from a pull-up doorframe attachment instead of using the ab-straps - this will actually improve your grip strength. If you find that you have trouble holding on, i.e. your wrists fail before your abdominal muscles do, then you might consider investing in a pair of wrist-wraps to help you maintain your grip. These are very inexpensive.

Aim for Good Form

You may have seen individuals performing hanging abdominal work. They were swinging wildly and possibly had someone holding their back still. This is incorrect form and is mainly working the hip flexors. If you follow the simple steps outlined above, your torso will remain still and vertical; the only movement will be from your abdominal muscles. You will curl up, bringing your pelvis towards your sternum, and hold this. The tempo for all exercises is 211 (one second to contract upwards, 1 second pause, then 2 seconds to return to the start position.

When you have completed the entire workout, you should consider your lower back. The best exercise to perform for lower back is a "hyperextension". This can be done with a hyperextension machine or a Swiss workout ball.

You lie on your stomach with your hips supported. Your torso hangs down, inverted, with your legs parallel to the ground. You then bend at the waist and raise your torso until your entire body is parallel. You can perform 3 sets of 15 reps of this exercise then begin adding weight as needed. To add weight, either use wrist weights or hold a plate behind your head.

Visit our Abdominal Training Gallery [http://gallery.losefatnotfaith.com/thumbnails.php?album=7] for illustrations of these exercises.

Jeremy Likness is the founder of Lose Fat, Not Faith He is a Certified Fitness Trainer and Specialist in Performance Nutrition. Jeremy is a freelance writer and entrepreneur. Jeremy lost 65 pounds of fat and was a Top 2000 Finisher in the 2000 Body-for-LIFE Competition. He is the author of the internationally-selling book, Lose Fat, Not Faith: A Transformation Guide [http://book.losefatnotfaith.com].

Doing Lots of Abdominal Exercises is the Best Way to Get Great Looking Abs - Fact Or Fiction?

The abdominals are the muscles that people are concerned with more than any other part of the body. There are so many products developed, articles written, videos made, etc. about developing better looking abs that it could seem like everyone must be walking around with incredible abs. Of course, most people don't have great abs and genetics does play a part, but another reason is because people assume that doing lots of abdominal exercises is the best way to get great looking abs. The reality is that this belief, while common, is complete fiction.

Doing lots of abdominal exercises is definitely not the best way to get great looking abs and believe it or not, it is actually a very inefficient way to get the abs you desire. That said, it is still very important to incorporate abdominal exercises into your overall routine. Just keep in mind that abdominal exercises have more to do with the way your abs work (strength, endurance, etc.) and less to do with making significant changes in the way they look.

One of the common beliefs people have is that their abdominal muscles are not big enough to be clearly seen, so they think doing a lot of abdominal exercise will make them stand out more. Doing abdominal exercise can tighten, tone, or increase the size of your abs, but the problem is rarely that your abs are not big enough to be seen. The real issue is the significant layer of fat that almost everyone has on top of their abdominal muscles. Until the majority of that fat is lost, your abs will never be visible, regardless of how much you train them.

Other people understand the layer of abdominal fat is the real problem, yet they still often develop the mindset that doing lots of abdominal exercises will get rid of their abdominal fat. The assumption being that exercising a particular body part will result in fat loss around those muscles, but unfortunately your body will lose fat from wherever it chooses, regardless of what muscles are being worked. Many people, including myself, tend to lose fat from the arms and legs first and from the abdominal area last. This can happen regardless of the types of exercises performed during your workouts.

In the end it all comes down to losing enough fat to make your abdominal muscles visible. This means your goal should be to use strategies that maximize your overall fat loss, instead of focusing on just trying to lose the fat around your stomach. Anything that results in you losing a significant amount of fat will make your abs look better, regardless of how much time you spend doing abdominal exercises.

The real keys to fat loss are consuming fewer calories than your body uses/burns by eating healthy foods, while not starving yourself, and performing challenging workouts that help you maintain your good weight (muscle, bone, etc.) and stimulate positive changes in your body. For most people the place to start is with their nutrition, because a great workout program will not make up for poor nutrition and it is almost impossible to achieve and maintain significant fat loss until you develop good eating habits.

Exercise plays a significant role in developing great looking as too, but abdominal exercises are not the key to success. Since the goal is to decrease your overall body fat enough to reveal your abs beneath the fat, your focus should be on performing exercises with a high metabolic cost. In other words, you want to perform exercises that are challenging and cause your body to burn a higher number of calories both during and after your workouts.

The best exercises for this purpose are ones that use the greatest amount of muscle mass, because more muscle used means more calories burned. Exercises such as squats, deadlifts, and lunges are great, because they use the majority of your lower body muscles and focus on the quads (front of your thigh), which is the largest muscle group in the body. One good set of these types of exercises will have a more significant impact on fat loss than many sets of exercises that focus on just your abs.

Of course, performing a few sets of quality squats will not magically make you lose a bunch of fat, but over time, performing exercises that focus on your largest muscle groups will result in more significant improvements than performing the same amount of exercises with smaller muscles, such as your abs. Other exercises, such as bench presses, push-ups, bent rows, and pull-ups are also examples of exercises that work a large amount of muscle at one time.

However, I don't want to give you the impression that you should only do exercises using your quads, or other large muscles because you should always have a complete training program that works your whole body. Focusing too much on any muscle group will result in muscle imbalances and cause problems such as pain or injury in the future. The best approach is to work your whole body, but spend more time doing exercises that use your larger muscles or use multiple muscles at the same time.

Traditional abdominal exercises are simply not very physiological demanding and they do not burn as many calories as many other exercises, so they have little impact on fat loss or overall body transformation. This is why doing lots of abdominal exercises is an inefficient way to get great looking abs. Even though you want to have great looking abs, the best thing to do is stop focusing on your abs and really focus on your whole body.

That said, abdominal exercises are still an incredibly important part of every health and fitness routine. Having well functioning abs will help protect your spine, stabilize your body, transfer force/energy from one part of your body to another, and significantly lower your chances of experiencing low back pain. Correctly performing abdominal exercises will tone, tighten, strengthen and build endurance in these very useful muscles, but doing lots of abdominal exercises is definitely not the best way to develop great looking abs.

Ross Harrison, CSCS, NSCA-CPT is a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning specialist, nutritional consultant, and has a BA in psychology from Grinnell College. He takes a holistic approach to health and fitness and teaches people how to lose weight, get in shape, and improve their quality of life with exercise and nutrition. If you want to find out more about his services or contact him for any reason, please visit http://precisionhealth-fitness.com/.

Learn the Truth About Weight Loss and Getting Great Abs

Debunking The Ab Myth

Ab training has been done to death but it's time

to take another look. Why? Because people are still

training their abs wrong so all that ab training

information must not be doing the job.

1 - No Spot Reducing - Endless crunches will not

melt away the fat from your midsection. It just

doesn't work that way. And despite the "burn" of

high rep ab exercises, you barely burn any calories

while doing those endless crunches.

Your fat burning time is best spent elsewhere on

more effective training. You also don't work the

ab muscle intensely enough to develop it.

So endless high rep crunches fail on both counts -

poor muscle building and poor fat burning. Two

thumbs down as the cliche goes.

2 - The Abs are a Muscle and should be trained as such.

You don't need high reps and lots of sets to work

your abs. This just leads to overtraining.

Now, abs are a more endurance oriented muscle so

slightly higher reps may be more effective. However,

you should keep the reps at 20 or lower and work on

increasing the resistance.

Yes, you should be increasing the weights on ab

exercises, just like your other exercises. The stronger

your abs, the better they will look when the fat

is stripped away.

Ever see a really thin guy with a flat stomach but

no abs? The abs haven't been trained and aren't

developed enough to stand out even when the fat is

stripped away.

3 - Don't train the abs - What the heck do I mean

by this? Well, your abs get a lot of indirect work

from other exercises so you really won't need more

than a couple of hard sets of weighted crunches to

work your abs.

Your abs are a factor in exercises such as squats,

deadlifts, seated or standing presses, dumbbell

pullovers, pulldowns, etc. Don't believe me?

Next time you work out, do a few hard sets of standing

stiff armed pulldowns on the lat machine and tell

me your abs aren't sore the next day. I did them

yesterday and my abs are more sore than my back today.

If you want to develop a flat stomach with your abs

visible, you need to treat your abs like a muscle

and train that way. And you need to strip away

the fat with a proper training and nutrition program

designed around total fat loss, not trying to spot

reduce through endless crunches.

Is there anything out there in the fitness world

suffering from more misinformation that how to get

abs?

The number of ab machines constantly coming to

market is mind boggling. Especially considering

that they aren't needed and won't give you the

results that you want.

Let's set the record straight on ab training right

now and give you the real information you need so

you can say no to the next infomercial ab machine

and yes to actual abs.

1 - Training your abs consistently will eventually

give you the flat stomach or six-pack that you want.

No. It's not gonna happen if your abs are covered

by a layer of body fat and doing endless sets of ab

exercises is not the way to rid yourself of that

excess body fat.

2 - Train your abs everyday for best results.

Again, no. Your abs are a muscle, just like your

chest, lats, arms and so on. You should train your

abs just like these other muscles, with progressive

resistance and high intensity - then allow them to

rest and recover. Never train your abs more than 3

days a week.

3 - You need to do hundreds or reps and feel the burn

to get great abs.

Yep, again the answer is no. The abs a muscle just

like I mentioned above. To get six pack abs you

need to strip off the fat, but you also need to build

the abs to get them to really pop out.

If the muscle isn't developed, you'll just have a

flat stomach but no abs. The name of the game is

progressive resistance for sets of 8 - 20 reps, just

like your other muscles.

4 - Train the abs with lots of sets and high reps to

burn off stomach fat.

You guessed it. This is also false. Spot reduction

just isn't going to happen as much as we'd all like

it to. You can't burn fat on your stomach by doing

endless crunches.

You need to put together a proper weight lifting

program, nutrition plan, and cardio in order to rid your

stomach of that stubborn layer of fat and bring yout

your abs.

Gregg Gillies

Gregg Gillies is a speaker, consultant, fat loss expert, trainer and author. He teaches fitness via his articles, books and courses at his web site http://www.buildleanmuscle.com . He is the author of two books: Complete information on his books, along with lots of free articles are available at his site. And while there, don't forget to sign up for his free newsletter, "Fit Physique".