Everyone wants 6 pack abs, so we naturally think to train abs every workout. With that said, your abs are muscles that need to rest to properly heal, just like any other body part. In my opinion, how you train your abs is more important then how often you train the abs, quality training!
Let’s take for example a person does crunches every single day. Day 1 they’ll do weighted, day 2 they’ll do high reps unweighted, and keep undulating the training. Is this the best way to train? Probably not, this repetitive training inevitable will cause some type of overuse injury, not to mention the fact that most people are already in flexion on a constant basis.
I don’t want to go over the whole McGill’s research on why not to do sit ups and flexion based exercises so I’ll give you his link HERE and a rebuttal HERE. I’ll leave it to you to come up to your own conclusions.
How to Train Your Abs
Moving forward, in my experience as a NYC personal trainer, I believe that we need to train the body in all aspects of movement. This is no different with the abdominals. We want to build stability from all around the trunk and train that way. Here’s how we break down the ab training categories:
Flexion
For ab strengthening focused on flexion, we’re talking about things like:
- Sit ups
- Leg lifts
- Hanging leg raises
These movements cause some sort of flexion in the spine, whether it’s from the top down or bottom up.
Anti-Extension
Here you’re trying to resist extension through the lumbar spine, such exercises include:
- Planks
- Ab wheel outs
- Band fall outs or TRX fall outs
The premise is to focus on a neutral spine throughout the movement and not hyperextend nor flex.
Rotation
This is pretty clear cut, rotation exercises is where the torso rotates through the movement. Examples include:
- Medicine ball throws
- Wood choppers
- Horizontal medicine ball throws
Keep mind that in each of these examples, the hips are free to move with the spine. I’m not a big fan of movements that cause you to lock your lumbopelvic region and then rotate, such as “Russian twist”. I believe these movements cause too much torsion through the lower back causing undue stress.
Anti-Rotation
I think this is one of the big keys that most people don’t do to strengthen their abs and trunk. The anti-rotation movement, is exactly as stated, we’re trying to not resist rotation. Examples include:
- Palloff hold
- Stability ball stir the pot
- *Farmers walk
I believe these movements are some of the most effective “ab” strengthening exercises are that are extremely under utilized. They also have great transfer over to sports or every day living, because the movements are mostly done in a standing motion where you need to utilize the full kinetic chain.
*Farmers walks are technically anti-lateral flexion but I still categories these two together.
Programming
So we went over why we don’t train abs on a daily basis and the categories. Let’s put into play.
Lets’ take a person that lifts weights x3 times a week and does x2 conditioning or “metabolic” workouts. Here’s how we would train their “Core”- which we call trunk because the “core” consists of the abs, back, and hips.
Week 1
- Day 1- Abs- Anti-extension: Plank series- Side plank and weighted regular planks 3x20sec
- Day 2- Back- Anti-flexion: Isometric back extension 3x20sec
- Day 3- Abs- Rotation: Medicine ball lateral toss 4×10
- Day 4- Back- Anti-flexion: back extension (45degrees) 3×10
- Day 5- Abs- Flexion: Hanging leg raises 3×15
As you can see we are training the abs and “core” (trunk) through various methods, which will help diminish the risk of an overuse injury via crunches every workout. This method will also build a very strong trunk through strengthening the supportive structures through various angles and methods.
We also need to point out that while your trunk may become much stronger, you still need to have an effective diet to get “6 pack abs”.
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Stay strong,