Your abs workout is one half of a two part “attack plan” for six pack abs. An abs workout coupled with an abs diet is what gives you super defined flat abs. The diet’s main function is to reduce the amount of bodyfat you carry so that your ab muscles can poke through and become visible. Your abs workout is designed to strengthen your ab muscles and increase their size and separation so you get the ripped “six pack of beer” look. If you don’t want rippling abs, keep up the abs diet but lower the intensity of your abs workout.
To get the best definition possible, the best separation of individual muscle groups (note: your rectus abdominis is actually one single muscle, but has several mini-muscle groups within it. That’s what forms your six pack. They’ll all part of the same muscle, but they are separated by small areas of tendons and ligaments) and the best overall look, you must follow 3 key principles.
1. Increase strength. Improving overall core strength is a very important part of your abs workout. Having a stable and powerful mid-section will give you the base that you need to perform more advanced exercises to target the other two key principles.
To develop your strength, perform exercises more quickly but still with as much control as you can. If you’re already quite strong, you can use weights to boost the difficulty of the exercises. For example, if you’re doing sit ups, put a few potatoes in a pillow case and hold it to your chest while you do each repetition. If you’re doing vertical leg crunches, strap some ankle weights on and see if you feel the difference.
2. Increase size. If your abs workout increases the strength of your abs, you will see an increase in size too. Bigger abs means they’re more likely to show through your body fat, and once you get the separation down, they’ll really pop out. To gain size, go for slow reps of the difficult exercises. This is a traditional bodybuilding technique, using heavy weights and controlled repetitions to engage as many muscle fibers as possible for each exercise.
As mentioned above, you can use weights to increase the difficulty, but there are also many natural bodyweight exercises which you can do without weights.
3. Increase separation. Definition comes through two factors in your abs workout – low bodyfat and well separated ab muscles. To ensure you get proper separation and maximum definition, do plenty of cardio so that your bodyfat is low and your skin is tight over your ab muscles, and then make sure you target the abs from many angles within your abs workout. Do lots of different types of abs exercise, and do larger numbers of repetitions to improve overall tone and shape.
A basic abs workout should be planned around your daily routine, and should aim to attack each of the three principles above throughout the week. Go for one of the principles each day to keep yourself interested and motivated, and to keep your body reacting to the new ab exercises you’re throwing at it.
