Besides the chest, everyone wants to have visible abdominal muscles. For
some strange reason, abdominal muscles are deemed the hardest to train
muscle. These 10 abdominal training tips will shed some light on the
dilemma and, hopefully, get you on the road to abs carved out of wood.
10. Breathing: It is often preached to exhale on the contraction and inhale
on the negative portion of the repetition. However, you can produce
stronger muscular contractions by holding your breath during ab exercises.
For example, try exhaling only after you've nearly reached completion of the
exercise.
9. Concentration: Michaelangelo did not sculpt his masterpieces with his
eyes closed, so what makes you think you can sculpt abs with your eyes
closed. As hard as it might be, look at your abs during the exercise. Not
only does this improve concentration, but raising the head or shoulders
during some exercises causes greater resistance which in return leads to
greater muscle growth.
8. Body Fat: Everyone has abs, some people don't see them because there is a
layer of fat around your waist. On the days you are not lifting, try some
cardio and look into some thermogenics. There are many articles on fat loss
on Bodybuilding.com, so look through them and determine which diet and
exercise routine will work best for you.
7. It's quality, not quantity that counts: For those of you who can pump out
1000 crunches in 5 minutes, here's a toast and a tip of the hat. but I really
don't care. Train the abs like every other muscle. I only give my abs 8
repetitions of each exercise and they look pretty good, I think. Training
your abs for long distance repetitions will only be training their
endurance, not their strength - and it's the strength that shows.
6. Feel the searing burn: Although you do not necessarily have to feel the
burn on every repetition to know that you're stimulating muscle growth, it's
a good mental factor to feel some resistance. For resistance, wrap leg
weights around your ankles, do sit-ups with a weight on your chest, cancel
out regular crunches and do weighted, overhead pull-down crunches on a
weight bench.
5. Abs don't cost money: Return that sh*t you bought from that television
commercial that aired at 3:00 in the morning. To train abs, you do not need
one of those roller things or special contraptions. The products on
television are good, but only to a certain point meaning that there is
little room for added resistance. All you need is a mat and something to
hang from to get great chiseled abs.
4. Lower Abs: Leg raises are a favorite lower ab exercise of mine. Yes,
once you hit a certain point, the resistance might be gone but, never fear
because there are different variations and movements that you can do to
excite muscle growth. For instance, try doing leg lifts off a higher bench,
thus increasing the total movement you have to do to get one repetition.
Another tip for leg raises is at the very top of the movement (where you
body looks like an "L") try to touch the ceiling with your toes without
lifting your shoulders off the bench. What this does is incorporate two
exercises into one movement and also adds a punch at the end.
3. Mid Section Abs: I have totally neglected the standard sit up for
training abs. Instead, I replaced the standard mid section routine with an
oblique routine. You can read more about this in my previous article
Awesome Abs. Fact is, is that you really don't need to directly train the
middle abs, you know, the section between your lower and upper abs.
Training lower, obliques and upper abs will undoubtedly hit the mid section
without you knowing it.
2. Upper Abs: Again, I rarely. I mean once in a blue moon, do regular
crunches. I do not like the fact that you can exceed 8 repetitions without
adding weight. So for the upper abs, I do several sets of weighted overhead
pull down crunches. The upper abs are probably the hardest to stimulate.
But just focus and concentrate on them throughout the exercise.
1. If you want them, act like you got them: It may sound stupid, but after
you complete a full set, pose and contract your abs. Yes, I said it, pose!
As long as your mom doesn't catch you posing in the mirror, it will be all
good. Posing contracts the muscles further and helps separate the muscles
to give them that more defined, ripped look.
BV
b_vlcek@hotmail.com
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