Abdominals 101

Everyone has different ideas of how to train abs. In my personal opinion, I believe training abs should be more than just looking good without a top on. It's all about core strength.

If you're like me, you'll have read multiple websites saying to do 50 sit ups and so on and just keep increasing the volume. I don't believe this is effective. You run out of energy and I don't believe you truly activate the abdominal muscles from doing this.

For my first set of tips for training abdominal muscles, I'm going to go over a few techniques I've used to help my abs.

1. Train it like you would any other muscle.

Now I've read page after page saying they need to be trained different because there a different type of muscle fibre, and that we don't want to add size to our abs. I just don't think this is true. I always train for 8-10 reps on abs, the same as back, or chest.

I do this by doing either cable crunches, weighted crunches on a decline bench, and for lower abs, do leg raises with a dumbbell between my feet or use a resistance band.

2. No matter how many reps you do, it won't get rid of fat!

That layer of fat covering your abs is still going to be there after 100 reps. You need to hit that cardio in order to get rid of the fat!

Abs become truly noticeable when you hit around 10% body fat, under that and you get the real definition!

3. A strong core means strong lifts.

Having strength in your core can help with big lifts like squats and deadlifts, and vice versa. So always remember to hit those golden lifts to get those abs you're craving!

As always, thank you for reading and leave a comment!