The best lower ab exercises
1. Support knee ups
2. Support leg raise
3. Hanging knee up
4. Hanging leg raise
5. Reverse crunch
6. Incline reverse crunch
7. Stability ball reverse crunch
8. Reverse crunch with medicine ball behind knees
9. Hip lift
10. Bent knee leg raise/hip lift combo
11. Incline hip lift
Lesson #6: Avoid weighted side bends, which thicken the waist. Instead, opt for body weight elbow to knee twisting crunches, twisting hanging knee ups and side crunches to develop your obliques
Which would you rather have: (A) a tiny waist that narrows down from broad shoulders and V-tapered back or (B) A muscular, but thick, wide and blocky waist.
Yeah – I picked “A” too. So do most other people. However, not a day goes by in the gym when I don’t see people doing side bends with heavy dumbbells. I could NEVER understand why people would ever want to do these. I suppose, once again, people mistakenly think they’re burning fat with this exercise.
The way to develop a beautiful and symmetrical physique is to create an illusion: Broad shoulders and a V-shaped torso must flow down into a tiny waist. You want to increase the size of your lats and deltoids (yes that includes you ladies too), while decreasing the size of your waist. Anything that makes your waist bigger will destroy your shape. Weighted side bends can make your waist thicker and wider by developing the muscles on the sides of the waist known as the obliques.
There’s a big difference between sports training and bodybuilding (or “cosmetic”) training. Unless you’re an athlete with a need for a strong, thick trunk musculature, I’d suggest avoiding weighted side bends and all other weighted oblique exercises completely.
Instead, simply do twisting elbow to knee crunches, twisting hanging knee ups, and side crunches only with your body weight. These exercises tend to hit the diagonal fibers of the obliques a little higher up on the waist, not the portion of the obliques on the lower, lateral area of the waist.
Lesson #7: Sit ups and leg raises are mediocre exercises at best
I’ve found that all varieties of sit-ups aggravate my lower back. Fifteen years ago I sustained a rupture of my fourth lumbar disc (L4) so severe that a neurosurgeon told me that I could forget about bodybuilding, I should never lift more than 40 pounds and I would eventually have to get surgery.
Despite the surgeon’s grim prognosis, I rehabilitated my own back, but to this day, I still have a sensitive lumbar area. Doing the wrong abdominal exercises always brings back the pain almost instantly. I look at this as a positive thing because it has taught me a lot about what’s really happening during certain ab exercises. It has also prompted me to modify my routine to avoid certain troublesome exercises that pull on the lumbar spine more than develop the abs.
Most people think sit-ups are primarily an ab exercise. They’re not. Sit-ups work the abs, but largely in an isometric fashion. Sit ups are an “integrated” exercise that work the abs and hip flexors, but the hip flexors do most of the work (especially the way most people perform them – quickly, with the feet anchored, and with extra weight).
The psoas muscle, which is the primary hip flexor involved in the sit-up, originates on the lower lumbar vertebrae and inserts on the lesser trochanter of the femur (the top of your thighbone). Because the psoas is so heavily involved in the sit up and because the psoas is attached to your lumbar spine, sit ups cause a tremendous amount of “pull” to occur on your lower back.
Visualize an imaginary hand reaching through your stomach, grabbing a hold of your spine, and pulling on it as if the hand were trying to yank your spine right out the front of your stomach. That’s essentially what’s happening when you do sit ups or roman chair sit-ups. Ditto for supine full range straight leg raises.
You might say, “But I feel it working – I feel the burn!” Yes, but your abs aren’t contracting dynamically through their full range of motion, they’re contracting isometrically – and that causes the burn. It’s similar to when you hold a dumbbell out at arms length in front of you for as long as you can. Before long your shoulder is burning like crazy to the point where you cant even hold the dumbbell any longer. You get great burn from this, but that’s not how you’d train your shoulders is it? So why would you train your abs that way?
Sit-ups have made somewhat of a comeback lately, as the sports training and core training “gurus” claim that the hip flexors should be integrated into your ab routines. Well, unless you’re an athlete with a specific need for strong hip flexors, you have no history of lower back injury, and you already have a strong lower back and strong abdominals, forget about using sit-ups as your primary exercise. They’re a mediocre exercise at best, and for some people with injuries (even “old” injuries like I have), sit ups are contraindicated completely.
Now… I know what you’re thinking… You know someone who does a zillion sit ups a day, they have great abs and have never had a back injury. Well, first of all, if the individual has strong abs and lower back and no pre-existing injuries, sit ups done with good form won’t necessarily cause an injury. Second, as I said earlier, developing the abdominal muscles is not difficult. To a certain degree, you can develop the ab muscles from almost any ab exercise – even nothing but sit-ups or isometric exercises.
When I was back in my “human guinea pig” days, I once went over a year without doing any ab exercises whatsoever. After I dieted down to about the mid single digits in body fat, there were my abs, looking EXACTLY like they did the year before when I was training them two or three times per week. Knowing this, I’m often tempted not to train abs at all, except that I know strong abs are important for stability and injury prevention.
Just because someone has great abs doesn’t mean they’re using the best routine. Part of it may be genetics, but mostly it just means they have low body fat! Let me drive this point home AGAIN – Having “killer six-pack abs” has less to do with training than with low body fat. Everyone – including you – has a six pack! Most people just can’t see theirs yet.
Lesson #8: When you reach the advanced level, begin using supersets, tri-sets and giant sets (circuit training) in your ab workouts.
One of the fastest ways I know of to develop the abs is to use supersets, tri sets, giant sets or circuit-style ab training, where you perform two or more exercises in a row without stopping. Coincidentally, this is also a great way to get your workouts finished faster. This is advanced form of training and you’ll need time to build up the strength and endurance necessary to use these techniques.
A SUPERSET is where you perform two exercises in a row without stopping. For example, you might do a reverse crunch for 15-25 reps, then without any rest whatsoever, go directly into a regular crunch for 15-25 reps, for a grand total of 30 – 50 reps non stop. That’s one superset. You would then take your usual rest interval and repeat for the desired number of sets.
TRI-SETS are the same as supersets, except you perform three exercises in a row without stopping. For example, you might do the reverse crunch, hip lift, and regular crunch all in a row with no rest between exercises. (ouch!)
GIANT SETS are when you perform four or more exercises in a row without stopping. Some people call this circuit training, although performing “circuit training” for a single body part is generally referred to more often as “giant setting.”
PART II: My Favorite killer ab Routines
The best way to finish up an ab article is with some routines, don’t you agree? All of the following routines are actual programs that I have used and/or are currently using now. I have tested them and they’re all KILLER!
Basic straights sets routine
1. Reverse crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
2. Floor crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
3. Elbow to knee twisting crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
(or side crunch)
Advanced straight sets routine
1. Incline reverse crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
2. Kneeling cable crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
3. Hanging twisting knee up 3 sets X 15-25 reps
Heavy-light routine
Select three ab exercises, all using resistance, for example:
1. Kneeling cable crunch
2. Weighted stability ball crunch
3. Supine Ab crunch machine
Perform three sets of each exercise. Every other workout, change repetition range as follows:
Workout A: (light) 15-25 reps, tempo 1011
Workout B (heavy) 8-12 reps, tempo 2022
Tempo (seconds)
2 eccentric
0 pause in stretch pos
2 concentric
2 pause in contracted position
Superset routine
1. Hanging knee up 2-3 sets X 15-25 reps
superset to:
2. Kneeling cable crunch 2-3 sets X 15-25 reps
3. Reverse Crunch 2-3 sets X 15-25 reps
superset to:
4. Crunch with feet on bench 2-3 sets X 15-25 reps
Tri-set routine
1. Hanging Leg raise 3 sets X 15-25 reps
no rest, go directly to:
2. Hanging Knee Up 3 sets X 15-25 reps
no rest, go directly to:
3. Weighted supine crunch 3 sets X 15-25 reps
rest 60 seconds, repeat for a total of three tri-sets
The Ultimate Killer Ab Routine (giant set)
1. Hanging straight leg raise 15-25 reps
2. Hanging knee ups 15-25 reps or as many as possible
3. Hip lift 15-25 reps
4. Reverse crunches 15-25 reps
5. Weighted supine crunch 15-25 reps
6. Bodyweight crunches 15-25 reps
Each sequence of six exercises is one giant set. Rest 60 – 90 seconds after you finish exercise #6, then repeat for a total of three circuits. (if you can get through three circuits of this routine with strict form, including hitting 25 strict leg raises and 25 knee strict knee ups, you are in elite company) Good luck!
Conclusion
These eight principles and the sample routines are just the tip of the iceberg in my ab training arsenal but it’s all I have time for in this newsletter. However, this should be more than enough ammo for you to begin an all out assault on your abs.
If you employ these techniques in conjunction with a supportive fat loss nutrition and cardio program such as Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (BFFM), your abs will come in so fast it will almost scare you!
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