There’s something about a defined set of abs that captivates onlookers and draws their eyes in. Sure, big arms may catch a few glances, and for some women, their hearts might skip a beat, but there’s no comparison to a polished midsection.
Awesome abs can put ladies (and gentlemen) into a sort of trance, eliciting sighs of ‘Oh, can I touch those?’ referring, of course, to your chiseled rock-hard abs. You might have big arms, but if they’re hanging next to a bulging gut, you won’t get the longing looks that a tight midsection draws. Even with your clothes on, it’s evident: the abs have it!
So, you didn’t need convincing that your midsection has the power to attract the opposite sex like a shiny new Porsche (well, almost)? You’re saying you need information to make your abs stand out like relief, like tightly packed blocks of polished granite, even when you’re relaxed?
Top 10 Ab Myths
Let’s start by debunking a few myths, so you can sprint full throttle towards that six-pack (and the first step is taking your mind off beer).
Myth 1: Abs are a bunch of knotted muscle masses
In reality, what’s commonly referred to as abs is one muscle: the rectus abdominis. It runs from the bottom of the rib cage to the pelvis. The reason it looks like a six-pack is because horizontal and vertical tendons form different sections. The tendons create the dividing lines you see. Okay, maybe you don’t see them yet, but that’ll change soon!
Myth 2: You need to do hundreds of reps to get good abs
Wrong! The rectus abdominis is a muscle like the biceps, chest, shoulders, and so on. To get a deep and polished midsection, you need to build it. Yes, I said build it, but don’t panic. You won’t end up with a bulging gut full of muscles because the rectus abdominis is relatively flat, and it’s tightened by the aforementioned tendons.
Anyway, to ensure these tendons sit deeper so you get a good outline, you need to build enough muscle mass to have it protrude above the tendons. And how do you build muscles? With progressive resistance training: adding weight to your ab exercises where possible and working towards eight to twenty reps per set.
Myth 3: For best results, you should train your abs every day
Not at all! Again, the rectus abdominis is a muscle like your chest, back, and so on. If you’re working your abs intensely across their entire length, then they need to rest to recover and rebuild. Never train your abs more than three times a week on non-consecutive days, and two might be better if you’re training them with high intensity.
Myth 4: The crunch is the best ab exercise
That’s like saying the leg extension is the best quadriceps exercise. Sure, it isolates the muscle you want to train, but most bodybuilders know that isolation exercises aren’t the best for gaining mass. In the case of quadriceps, that means squats and leg presses.
As for abs, a recent study found that even the bicycle exercise – pedaling your legs in the air while lying on your back – elicits more electrical activity, or tissue activation, in the rectus abdominis than the standard crunch. Why? Muscles are designed to work best with other muscles, and for abs, that means the hip flexors need to pitch in.
Other exercises that make these muscles work as a team include hanging knee-ups, oblique knee-ups, and oblique sit-ups. It goes without saying that when you perform those exercises with momentum (meaning lots of force and speed), throwing your upper body or legs through the air with each rep, they become inferior to the strict crunch. You need full control to get the best ab effects.
Myth 5: The standard crunch trains the rectus abdominis over the entire range of motion
If you perform crunches on the ground or on a flat bench, you’re only training the upper two-thirds of the abs’ range of motion. To train the other one-third, your back needs to be bent 30 degrees backward, so the rectus abdominis is fully stretched.
Since your upper body can’t move through the floor, you need to perform the crunch with lower back support that allows your upper body to bend backward. That’s also the idea behind the Ab Bench, with its curved back pad.
The cable pulls you backward over the pad, so your lower back is slightly bent, and the rectus abdominis is stretched. From that position, you can pull your body forward into the crunch position and get a full ab contraction.
Almost everyone doing a full crunch on the Ab Bench feels it strongly in the abs. The Ab Bench also makes it easier and more comfortable to add weight as you get stronger. Remember, you need progressive resistance training to build muscle mass.
However, most gyms don’t have an Ab Bench, but you can simulate the exercise by doing cable crunches with lower back support. You can have a partner place their hand on your lower back to get a slight lower back bend and a good muscle stretch with each rep.
You can also do cable crunches by sitting backward on a preacher bench, setting the arm pad low to support your lower back.
Myth 6: Leg raises done at the end of a bench are one of the best ab exercises
If you’ve read the above discussion on muscle teamwork, you might think leg raises work the muscles as a team and adequately stimulate the rectus abdominis, but often they mostly work the hip flexors with the rectus abdominis acting as a stabilizer in a statically contracted state.
In other words, you’re not getting much – if any – dynamic movement in your abs, only in your hip flexors. This can be the case if you’re not performing them correctly. You need to roll your hips upward toward your upper body at the top of each rep; pull your knees toward your chest. If you don’t do that hip roll, you’re not effectively training your abs, only your hip flexors.
Most athletes don’t get the hip roll right away when hanging, so start with the slanted version first. With your head up on the slanted ab bench and your legs slightly bent, pull your knees up and toward your chest until your hips are off the bench. Pause, and lower your legs while extending them. You should grab the top of the bench for stabilization.
You should perform the hanging version in the same way, pulling your knees up and toward your chest while rolling your hips upward. You don’t get this crucial hip roll with various leg raise exercises, whether you’re doing them at the end of a bench or on the ground, making them inefficient ab exercises. Remember, you need to roll those hips up.
Myth 7: All you need are sit-ups – or another compound midsection exercise – to develop fantastic abs
While you can develop good abs by doing just a compound exercise like sit-ups, engaging your hip flexors as a team, this isn’t the most effective way to perfect your midsection. Most athletes will achieve faster results by working the rectus abdominis from three specific positions in each workout, with maximal effort:
- start with a muscle teamwork exercise, such as sit-ups or knee-ups (don’t forget the hip roll)
- follow this with an exercise that stretches the rectus abdominis well to ensure most muscle fibers are worked and a full range of motion is obtained
- isolate the rectus abdominis and force it to work in the fully contracted position
A workout that fulfills all the above requirements consists of sit-ups or knee-ups (midsection), cable crunches with lower back support or Ab Bench crunch pulls (stretching), and crunches with a two-second squeeze at the top (contracted). See also the two routines at the end of this article.
Myth 8: Consistently training your abs with a perfect and efficient program will eventually give you the six-pack you desire
Not if a layer of fat covers your midsection. So, stay away from the six-packs if you want a six-pack. As long as your body fat percentage is above 12 percent, your abs will remain hidden, regardless of how trained your rectus abdominis is. You need to diet away your fat to see your developed abs.
Myth 9: Side bends help get aesthetic abs
Heavy side bends, performed with a dumbbell in one hand, build your obliques on the sides of your midsection, which only serves to widen your waist and give the illusion of narrow shoulders. Yikes! Not really something a bodybuilder wants.
In case you need functional core strength for another sport and don’t care about how your body looks, then by all means, include heavy side bends in your program. You’ll gain more strength in your trunk rotation, precisely what, for example, a football lineman needs. Also, don’t think that light side bends or twists with a broomstick will melt your love handles away. Oops, getting ahead of myself…
Myth 10: Training your abs with more sets and reps will melt away your fat so you can see your six-pack
Sorry, but spot reduction only happens in fairy tales, and wishing it were so won’t make it so. You can’t burn belly fat by doing lots of reps in your ab exercises, plain and simple!
Most athletes hate to hear it, but they need to stick to a strict diet and/or do cardio training to lose fat all over their body.
Doesn’t a hundred sit-ups count as calorie-burning cardio? No. Those hundred sit-ups burn fewer calories than there are in a small apple.
A better strategy is to gradually reduce the number of calories you consume – remove 100 to 200 calories from your daily intake every three weeks – and/or add some aerobic training to your workouts. That’s the way to ultimately lose the fat from your midsection.
Once your body fat percentage drops below ten percent, you’ll start to see your abs. If you want to see your abs when you’re just standing relaxed, you’ll need to get your body fat percentage below six percent. For most people, that means making even more small calorie reductions every two to three weeks until your daily calorie intake gets close to 2000 calories.
If your body fat percentage is still unacceptable even after you’ve cut your calorie intake to the minimum, then you’ll need to add more cardio work and/or fat-burning supplements to increase your metabolism to get rid of that last bit of fat. The lower your body fat percentage gets, the harder it is to get even leaner.
Don’t give up, though. If you stick with it and follow the right training routine and methodical calorie reduction, a perfect midsection can become a reality for you, along with more than your share of admiring glances.
Two efficient ab routines and contraction positions:
- midsection: incline knee-ups 2 x 10
- stretching: cable crunches with lower back support 2 x 10
- contracted: crunches (hold for three seconds at the top) 1-2 x 10
- warm-up: Ab Bench crunch 1 x 10
- modified superset (rest 1.5 minutes between sets):
- hanging knee-ups 2-3 x 8-10
- Ab Bench crunch pulls 2-3 x 8-10
Note:
These two workouts are designed to achieve maximum fiber recruitment in the rectus abdominis. The first workout accomplishes this by training the three contraction positions of the muscle. The second includes the three positions but increases fiber recruitment by alternating a compound exercise with a contraction position exercise.
The contraction position exercise, the Ab Bench crunch pulls, activates more motor units (nerve centers that control muscle fibers) to increase fiber recruitment in the compound exercise that follows – hanging knee-ups.
