| Ten Strategies for shaping that six pack stomach! |
1 - Lower Abs
Building the upper abs is relatively easy, since almost every ab motion involves a contraction of the upper region. The majority of abdominal exercises work the upper abs at the cost and neglect of the lower abs. Meanwhile, even exclusive training of the lower abs will still result in impressive upper-ab development of your six pack.
2 - Reverse Crunch and Variations
Undoubtedly doing variations of reverse crunches is the most effective way to train your abs and carve that elusive six pack. By flexing the hip and rotating the legs, you engage so much more muscle. They do so much for functional strength because they demand that you use the entire anterior core to propel your legs up and knees toward your chest. Rotating the legs both inward and outward add a critical variation. This motion holds the key to good midsection development-it stresses the bulk of the central muscle of the abdomen with an emphasis on the lower area.
3 - Don't rep yourself into oblivion
Frequently people go crazy with repetitions, doing dozens or even hundreds per set in an effort to get that six pack quicker. After a certain point you stop stimulating and start annihilating. Overuse of these muscles in such sequence can lead to over-training and injuries like the common epigastric hernia (a tear in the tissue in the center of the abdomen that connects the two sides of the rectus abdominis called the linea alba). Granted, abs do require a slightly higher rep scheme than your average body part. However, I tend to keep my reps around 20-30 or less while instead increasing the level of difficulty with either added resistance or a steeper bench angle.
4 - Don't do too much weighted twisting
While twisting motions might seem like a great way to warm up or start your abs routine, they're actually quite dangerous if you twist too much with weight. For example, holding a barbell across your back and twisting can expose the lumbar spine to disc injury (the worst is in the seated position). Just stick to the basics, a stick or just the barbell bar would be good.
5 - Slim Waist? Avoid Weighted Side-bends
The abdominal muscles, like other muscles in your body, will grow with the stimulus of resistance training. If your goal is a small waist, you don't want to overdevelop muscles that will give you a wider appearance. Unfortunately, doing dumbbell side bends with weight will do just that, stimulating the muscles of the external obliques, located in the lower outer abdominal region. When excessively stimulated by resistance training, these muscles can grow and make your waist look wide and blocky, so if you don't want an overly muscular stomach then weighted side bends should not be part of your training.
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6 - Squeeze and Flex your Abs
One of the big mistakes you can make with abdominal training for bodybuilding purposes is not to flex the muscles as you train them. Too many people just go through the movements without squeezing hard. They view the ab session as an afterthought where they can just coast there way through it. Provide the same attention as you would with any other body part you want to develop.
7 - Maintain a slow descent
As with any other exercise, your descent should be slow and controlled, relative to your faster concentric (positive) motion. This is the key when attempting to dig deep into the fibers of the abs and really sculpt them.
8 - Don't do forced reps or negatives
These advanced training principles may work for other body parts, but for abs its overkill. You will gain no added benefit to having a partner help you through forced reps or resistance-based negative ab training. Implementing such tactics will give you no edge and is almost a certain way to get injured.
9 - Train your abs with more intensity but less frequency
Too often many fitness freaks train their abs every day. They tend to forget that the abdominals are just like other muscles, in that they need rest to recuperate and improve. Although the abs can be exposed to a bit more frequency in terms of the number of times you train them in a week when compared to other body parts, training them more than two to three times each week is excessive.
10 - Whenever possible ,get a partner to train abs with you
Ab training gets a little monotonous. Because the rep scheme is higher, training frequency is greater and you use no or very little resistance, your effort and intensity level can naturally get a little flat. You can avoid this unpleasant situation by grabbing a partner who has the same goals with you and run through the abs workout with him. This makes it more fun and a healthy competition between you and your partner can boost your intensity.
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