Two Key Principles of Ab Training
Heavy and short sets to failure
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The abdominal muscles are identical in structure to any other muscles on the body: biceps, quadriceps or pectoral muscles. Accordingly, they need to be trained according to the same rules. One of the main principles of muscle fiber hypertrophy is that muscles grow from heavy and short sets to failure.
The optimal duration of such a set is 30-60 seconds . The last repetitions should be done with difficulty and until a burning sensation appears in the muscles.
So to progress with your ab workout, you don't need to add more reps to your set.
This is a common story when a person reaches 200-300 repetitions at a time, but does not see the desired abs. And all because such training develops the endurance of the abdominal muscles, but not their size. In the case where the abdominal exercise approach does not cause a failure effect, you need to complicate the exercise. Almost every exercise can be made heavier with a little additional weight. And where this is not possible, there are always more advanced versions of the exercises.
Reduce fat percentage
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No workout will work if you don't eat right and don't control your calories. Proper and regular abdominal training will develop the size and strength of your abs, but you won’t see them behind the layer of subcutaneous fat. To get a ripped body, create a calorie deficit.
To do this, you need to eat right, not overeat, and train your whole body to burn more calories . Unfortunately, abdominal exercises are not very energy-intensive movements and it will be useless to build your program only from them. Therefore, the best training option would be a full-body program, which includes basic exercises for the legs, back and arms, and also separately works the abdominal muscles.
There is another myth that there are exercises for men and exercises for girls. But the only gender difference in muscle is sheer strength. There is no difference in the structure of the abdominal muscles. This leads to a simple conclusion. Girls will often perform simpler variations of exercises, while men will progress faster and will need to gradually increase the complexity of the program.
How to effectively pump up abs for girls
I specially put it in a separate heading in order to tell every beauty who visited this page that when working out the abs, it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. The muscles are the same, the complexes are the same. The only fundamental difference is that it is easier for guys to pump up prominent abs than for girls.
The essence of this theory is that a girl at the genetic level has a predisposition to a thickened layer of fat in the waist area; nature did this not to mock lovely ladies, but to give every girl the opportunity to bear and give birth to strong and healthy offspring.
Please do not misunderstand my words: nothing bad will happen to your future baby if today you manage to pump up an attractive sexy tummy. On the contrary, trained muscles will help your baby feel more comfortable in the womb. And here again, without going to extremes, you definitely shouldn’t pump up your abs during pregnancy. It’s better to wait a little, and after reading the article on how to pump up your abs after childbirth, get down to business actively.
And you shouldn’t overuse abdominal training during your period. Three days a month you can do without training.
What is a press?
Let's first look at what abs are. That's more than the 8 pack you see in the mirror. The abdominal muscles consist of an outer layer:
- rectus abdominis muscle,
- oblique muscles;
and inner layer:
- transverse muscle,
- internal oblique.
But that's not all. The above muscles rarely work in isolation. In almost any exercise, other muscle groups are connected to them:
- adductor muscles of the thigh,
- sartorius muscle of the thigh,
- rectus femoris muscle,
- gluteal,
- back extensors.
This muscle group is called the core or midline of the body. So if you want to pump up your abs, you need to train your core.
How to start training
So, let's pump up the press at home. Where to start? By setting a clear goal for your training. It is important to understand that the more specific the goal, the greater the chances of achieving it. It’s not enough to just say something like “I want a beautiful body.” This concept is too abstract. The best thing to do is find a photo of beautiful abs and tell yourself that this is exactly the result you want to achieve. Hang this photo in a prominent place: it will only increase your motivation.
After choosing an end goal, determine a short-term goal and an intermediate goal. For example, as soon as possible, set yourself the task of balancing your diet and developing a clear training schedule.
An intermediate goal may be the desire to improve some body parameter. For example, reduce a specific amount of extra pounds or remove a few centimeters from your waist. Set aside a certain period of time during which you must achieve your goal.
And only after this should you begin physical exercise.
At the beginning of training, you should pay attention not to the exercises themselves and not to the number of repetitions, but to the correctness of their implementation. It is precisely because of the competent execution technique that your muscles will be pumped up in the shortest possible time.
Initially, the greatest benefit will come from basic exercises aimed at working the upper and lower parts of the rectus abdominis muscle. It is also worth paying attention to the internal oblique muscles. You can supplement the initial set of exercises by working on the internal long muscles of the back.
One of the many sets of exercises:
Exercise 1 “Raising bent legs in a lying position”
While lying down, relax your shoulders and neck, and place your hands behind your head. Raise your legs and bend your knees at right angles so that your shins are parallel to the floor and your thighs are perpendicular. Tightening your lower abdominal muscles, lift your hips and point them forward. After this, slowly lower your hips, returning to the starting position. Do about 10 reps.
Exercise 2 “Raising the torso to the side from a lying position”
While lying down, bend your right leg and place it on top of your left so that your shin rests on your knee. Place your right hand behind your head, and place your left hand on your stomach near the waist. Raise your right shoulder and bend toward your left knee. Slowly lower your shoulder to the starting position. Repeat this exercise 8-10 times, then change legs and arms, and then do the exercise again.
Exercise 3 “Raising opposite legs and arms while lying on your stomach”
Lie on your stomach. Straighten your legs and arms parallel to your body. Stretch your arms forward, place them on the floor, palms down. Raise your left arm and right leg at the same time. Hold at the top for about 2 seconds. Lower your limbs. Repeat the exercise, using your right arm and left leg. Do 12 repetitions for each pair of limbs.
The movements must be performed one after another. The interval between them should be no more than 5 seconds. Watch your technique. Training should be carried out at least three times every 7 days.
How often should you train your abs?
In the last paragraph, we learned that the core muscles are involved in almost any exercise as stabilizer muscles. Of course, you won’t feel the characteristic burning sensation in your abdomen after a set of barbell squats. But this load should be taken into account if you follow a program that includes basic exercises. Therefore, you should devote 1-2 workouts per week to impact targeted abdominal training.
In this case, the muscles will have time to recover sufficiently. Remember, growth does not happen during exercise, but during rest after it.
Effective abdominal exercises
Popular abdominal exercises are:
- Crunches
- Leg raises
- Plank
There are many different variations of them. In fact, there are even more of them. But at the very beginning of training, you should not use all the exercises in a row. Choose a set of 2-3 movements and work on them for 8-12 weeks to get results
. Gradually increase the complexity of your workouts to create a progression of loads. Abs of steel are the result of many years of training, but the first results can be obtained in just a month of training.
I talked in detail about how to perform these exercises correctly in the video. At the end, you will find a program of abdominal exercises at home, with which you can begin your training.
The most common myths about pumping abs
Abdominal training is such a discussed and, in turn, unknown topic that there are many misconceptions regarding this action. First, it’s worth dispelling all the myths that are associated with pumping up the abs.
There is an opinion that if a person has fat deposits in the abdominal area, then pumping the abs will effectively drive them away. This is wrong. The truth is that fat is lost evenly from the entire body, which means that it is impossible to get rid of excess cells from the belly just by doing abs. The bad news for men is that belly fat is the first to be stored and the last to be lost . It is important to understand that the fat layer is nothing more than our additional energy resource. If you want to eliminate fat, then burn excess energy.
Know that abdominal exercises themselves burn very few calories. For example, 50 sit-ups in a supine position can burn about 15 kcal, while 1 trip to a fast food restaurant adds 570 kcal or more to the body. It is difficult to even calculate how many times you need to perform this exercise to compensate for the harm caused by one-time consumption of fast food.
Belly fat is the first to form in men and the last to disappear.
In addition to fast food, there are many other foods that you should avoid if you want to have beautiful and toned abs. But you don’t need to perceive giving up junk food as a forced diet or an unpleasant restriction. Remember that you are just making a conscious choice of a healthy person striving to acquire an ideally beautiful body.
Another misconception is the idea that more repetitions of one exercise will lead to a more acceptable result. This is not true, since the abdominal muscles are no different from any other muscles in the human body. Therefore, you should not do more than 15 repetitions of the same type in 1 approach . Abdominal pumping at home is no exception.
If the exercise is too easy, you should complicate it or replace it with another, more complex one. You don't need to do more than 20 repetitions at a time, otherwise you will build muscle endurance. This is also good, but in this case it is not she who is interested, but the relief and volume of the muscles.
The next myth is that you need to train your abs every day. But it is necessary to take into account that any muscles, including the abdomen, need rest. They need to be given at least 1 day to rest. You should not strain your abs more than three times a week .
You shouldn’t pump up your abs more than 3 times a week.
Like most other muscles in the body, the abdominal muscles are composed of slow and fast muscle fibers. Slow - designed for constant load. In the human body they are almost always tense and in this case they serve to maintain correct posture. Fast fibers are used for sudden movements and jerks. They are more elastic and easier to increase in volume due to training. It is the fast type of muscle fibers that should be pumped to obtain sculpted abs .
Many people believe that pumping the press at home requires only a few similar exercises. This is wrong. The truth is that the abdominal muscles quickly adapt to the load, so you need to change your training programs quite often to achieve acceptable results.
There is a widespread misconception that good abs can be achieved by training the abdominal muscles alone, ignoring diet and anaerobic exercise. This is only possible if you are not obese, do not eat too much, and do not sit in one place for more than 15 minutes during the day. But this rarely happens. Most people need to hit all fronts at once to achieve the desired result.
