Whether you’re chasing that elusive six-pack or just looking to shed some extra baggage around your midsection, there are three key areas to focus on to achieve maximum abdominal development.
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Strong abdominal muscles not only help strengthen your lower back, they also improve your posture. Most lower back injuries are – believe it or not – caused by weak abdominal muscles. By focusing on these three areas, you will start to see good results over time.
Good cardiovascular training
You can have the best, most muscular abdominal muscles in the world, but if they are covered by a layer of body fat, nobody will notice.
To help rid yourself of that extra fat around your midsection, you need to incorporate effective cardio workouts into your fitness plan. It’s not possible to slim down your waistline by doing extra abdominal exercises like crunches or sit-ups alone. You need to burn the fat through cardio training to tighten the area around your midsection.
Abdominal training alone won’t do much to burn the fat over your abdominal muscles. You need intensive cardio to achieve that. Three to four weekly sessions such as intense jogging, running, using the Stairmaster, the elliptical trainer, jumping rope, or cycling should be enough to get the whole fat loss process going.
Swimming, climbing, and aerobic classes are also useful, but nothing beats jogging or running. If your body can handle it, this is the most intensive, efficient, and effective way to burn calories. If your joints start to bother you when you run outside, try running on a treadmill indoors or on grass outside. It’s guaranteed to be less stressful on your body.
Again, you really NEED three to four intensive cardio workouts per week to create a calorie deficit and help you get rid of the fat hiding your abdominal muscles.
Good nutrition
Don’t sabotage your gym results by eating poorly. Good nutrition and eating habits help you even more than cardio to lose body fat and reveal your abdominal muscles. If you consume more calories daily than you use, you will build body fat. So, you need to burn more calories than you eat.
Nutrition is important because you can reduce the number of calories you eat, which has a beneficial effect on the number of calories you need to burn with cardio. Eat five to six small, well-balanced meals a day, so you eat a meal every three to four hours.
Also, always try to have something healthy with you, just in case. If you don’t, and you get really hungry, the temptation to eat something not so good for your body is high. When you’re really hungry, all good intentions quickly go out the window, and you can forget about your abdominal muscles.
But it’s important to consume something. Not eating on time or not eating at all is almost as bad as overeating. Keep your protein intake high (around 50% of your daily calories), carbohydrates moderate (40%), and fats minimal (10%).
Muscle fibers are made up of tightly wound protein molecules that are damaged during training, so you need more protein to repair your muscles than a non-exercising person. Carbohydrates also play an important role in your body, but you shouldn’t base your meals on carbohydrates. Try to avoid simple sugars like cane sugar, honey, fruit juices, syrup, and too much fruit.
Definitely drink four liters of clean water a day. It helps your body absorb and digest nutrients and also helps flush toxins out of your body.
In short, make sure you nourish your body every three to four hours with a well-balanced meal.
Weight training and the abdominal muscles
Here is where most people go wrong when trying to develop their abdominal muscles. When I ask if they would train their biceps or chest with sets of fifty repetitions without weight, of course they say no. So why do they do that with their abdominal muscles?
Here’s an important point: if you want to develop your abdominal muscles properly, you need to add resistance (weight) to your abdominal exercises. Abdominal muscles are muscles, just like your biceps, triceps, chest, and buttocks. You need resistance to strengthen and build those muscles. The same goes for your abdominal muscles.
Exercises for the best abdominal muscle stimulation
Weighted Crunches
Grab a dumbbell, hold it in front of your face, or let it rest on your chest under your chin, and do regular crunches. You use your abdominal muscles more now because they move against the resistance of the dumbbell. Choose a weight heavy enough to do 10 to 15 repetitions, but no more. Remember, you need to use enough resistance to force your abdominal muscles to work.
Cable Rope Crunches
Grab the triceps rope, kneel down, and bend forward, tightening your abdominal muscles as you move downward. It’s basically a regular crunch, except you’re kneeling now. However, the contraction of the abdominal muscles is the same.
Keep your hips still; you’re not really using your abdominal muscles when you let them move. Just a small, thirty-degree movement until you feel your abdominal muscles tighten, hold for a few seconds, and then come back up.
Weighted Leg Raises
Lie flat on your back, with your hands under your buttocks. Hold a small dumbbell between your feet and do leg raises. Start with your feet 15 centimeters above the ground, bring them up 30 to 40 centimeters, and then lower them. You can also do these leg raises at the end of a bench.
Seated Ab Machine
Don’t go all the way down here either, just far enough (thirty degrees) until your abdominal muscles are fully contracted, hold for a few seconds, and come back up. This is very similar to cable rope crunches.
Stability Ball Crunches
Working with a stability ball (Swiss ball) requires you to maintain your balance during your abdominal exercises. Stability exercises are good for training your core, your abdominal muscles, and your lower back.
Lie down on the stability ball the way you normally do your crunches. Lie on the ball so that your lower back rests on it. Keep your feet close together on the ground to make your body slightly more unstable (which helps to work harder to maintain your balance) and keep your hands behind your head or folded on your chest. Now bring your upper body towards your knees and exhale as you tighten your abdominal muscles. Then slowly lower your body back to the starting position while keeping your abdominal muscles tense.
Whatever exercise you do, it’s important to add weight/resistance. If you don’t, you’ll never increase the amount of muscle mass in that region. You only need to train your abdominal muscles twice a week to achieve the best results. Again, treat them like any other muscle group, which means you shouldn’t train them more often. Combine this weight training with a good nutrition plan and intensive cardio, and that elusive six-pack will be within reach!
