Abdominal Workouts
Weight Training Advice
overly huge. On a woman, having a tight midsection and a flat stomach will help make the hips and butt look even sexier. Basically, for either sex, having a small midsection will make your other body parts look better, and of course the abdominals and obliques themselves are more pleasing to the eye if they're musclular and not covered by fat. To get that midsection into this kind of incredible shape you need to do abdominal workouts.
Even though getting rid of fat is of utmost importance when it comes to decreasing the size of your midsection, you'll still need to do ab workouts to make it more muscular and tight when you lose the fat. Abdominal workouts will also help strengthen your core, which will help your body support more weights when you're training other muscle groups. Even if you're into powerlifting and not interested in getting ripped but lifting as much weight as possible, you'll still need to train your abs to handle super heavy weights. How can you possibly handle a 500 or 600 pound squat if your abdominals are relatively weak?
The abdominals heal very quickly as compared to other muscle groups so you can train them more often. If you want you can do an ab workout every other day unless your abs are still sore from their last workout. If your abs are still sore your weights on other exercises may suffer.
Your body will also get used to your ab workouts quickly if you always do the same exercises. In one sense you won't have to worry about soreness as much, but you may not be getting the work you need to get that six-pack. Make sure to try different ab exercises every now and then to keep from hitting a plateau.
The exercises you do during your abdominal workouts should also be for sets of higher reps. You aren't trying to add muscle size to this area so you don't need to do heavy sets with just a few reps. You should always do at least 20 reps on any set of an ab exercise, if not 50 or more.
This sample abdominal workout is easy for anyone to follow and should be done as often as possible if your abs aren't sore. Do as many reps per set as you can.
2-3 sets of crunches
2-3 sets of leg raises
2-3 sets of side bends or other oblique exercise
2-3 sets of different ab exercise (twisting sit-ups, ab roller, etc.)
You can do many different versions of the exercises in the ab workout above. It's easy to add a twist to crunches and leg raises - on one rep twist to the left, on the next twist to the right. Doing these twisting crunches and leg raises will get the obliques involved.
Sit-ups tend to work your hip flexors as much, if not more, than your abs. You don't need to make them your featured exercise during an abdominal workout since crunches will actuallly target the abs more. However, doing twisting sit-ups on a declined bench will certianly help you get a tighter midsection.
One of the keys to getting a good ab workout is to make sure you contract your abs on every single rep. Just bobbing your head up and down when you do crunches isn't going to give you the work you need for an optimal workout. Don't use your heads to pull on your head to get more reps on an ab exercise either, as this is bad for your neck and you won't be getting as much work out of your abs anyway.
A small, tight midsection is the hallmark of any muscular physique. On a man, having a ripped midsection makes your chest, shoulders, and upper back look bigger even if you're not
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