The Best Workouts For Abs
Man, was I wrong.
For starters, the idea that you need to give this much attention to one muscle group is completely misguided.
How many of you work your calves or your triceps every day? That's what I thought.
But more importantly, your body is not built for the kind of rocking-back-and-forth endlessly movements of crunches and other ab isolation exercises.
You are probably going to end up spraining your neck if you haven't done so already! Well, do you know what your abs are best suited for? Stabilization! That's right, your abs and lower back muscles are there to stabilize the part of your body between your chest and pelvis, and it is stabilizing exercises that will train your ab muscles much more efficiently than crunches.
The Best Workouts for Abs So the best workouts for abs are compound movements that involve most of the body and requires you to engage your core muscles in stabilization.
Here are some examples:
- Deadlifts
- Squats
- Overhead presses
- Bench presses
- Pull ups
- Dips
- Push ups
Now hold yourself in a static position there for as long as you can! (It's harder than it sounds.
) L-sits: You'll need a pull up bar or captain's chair for this one.
Anything where you can hold your legs up unassisted will do.
Either hang from the bar or sit back in the chair, then lift your legs out in front of you until they are at a 90 degree angle.
Hold them here for as long as you can.
HIIT (high-intensity interval training): This one isn't as intuitive, but if you want to build a six pack, you'll need to get rid of all your belly fat so people can see them! In HIIT, you rapidly alternate between all-out sprints and rest.
You can do this with running, biking, or jumping rope, but aim for intervals of 20 seconds of work to 10 seconds of rest, and repeat this eight times in a row.
There you go! Now you are armed with the best workouts for abs, so go build the body you've always wanted!