Ab exercises how many reps

Also wrong. All the abs-toning exercises in the world won't burn the fat on top of the muscle. To accomplish this, you need a combination of cardio exercise and a healthy diet to create a caloric deficit necessary to lose weight. Get a free weight loss meal plan at SparkPeople. The exercises listed in 7 are great ways to target your abs and strengthen them. Moves like that should be part of your training.

But did you know that your abs also play a role in balance , posture and stabilization during all kinds of everyday movements and exercises—everything from walking to your car to coughing to squatting? It's true. They always engage a little bit during everyday activities, even when you're not thinking about them. But you CAN and should think about them more often.

Next time you follow one of my workout videos , notice how many times I remind you to "engage your abs"—even when you're working your arms, back or legs.

This is going to strengthen your form and control during the exercise at hand, and it gives those transverse abdominals a little extra something to work on, too which also protects you from injury. Try to think about your abs more during the day.

You'll sit taller, help strengthen that deep abdominal muscle, and perform better all around! Machines that swing, roll, rock, shake, slide, and make abs training look oh so easy! Do some of these machines work your abdominal muscles? Will using that machine alone help you get washboard abs?

Sorry, but no. Think about the mistakes listed above. Using an abs workout machine means you'll be making a lot of the mistakes above: spot training, neglecting other movements, doing the same routine, doing too many reps, etc. Their commercials may seem impressive and realistic, but I'd advise you to save your money. The real secret to getting the kind of results seen in those commercials isn't about the gadget at all.

Are you guilty of any of these mistakes? Do you have any others to add to my list? What's your favorite way to work your abs? I hope not. How many times per hour do your abs contract to stabilize your spinal column? The point is that if a muscle fiber prefers high reps to low reps, why not add resistance to the high-rep variation as adaptation occurs?

In other words, when your calves and abs can perform more than 20 reps, resistance should be added. This way, you can work on overloading the muscle with more weight, but you remain in the rep range in which these muscles perform best. Some of the best abs in the world of bodybuilding were built without the use of any extra weight, and many big calf owners rarely drop their reps below High repetition is the dialect that abs and calves understand.

The muscle responds only if the message is understood. By all means, use progressively heavier weight with abs and calves, but you should meld it into the rep range that those muscle fibers understand. For most bodybuilders, abs and calves are the toughest bodyparts to develop, especially for mega gains in muscle size.

I believe that you need to use heavy weight for low reps in order to achieve the optimum development of each. The reason for this has to do with recruitment of the muscle fibers involved. The basis for this is the Size Principle. According to this principle, the smaller, slow-twitch muscle fibers are recruited first. Progressively larger, fast-twitch muscle fibers are recruited based on the increasing demands of heavier weights. Heavier weight that which you can lift for about reps requires the recruitment of more muscle fibers than lighter weight that which you can lift for 12 or more reps.

Thus, there is a greater potential to develop these stubborn bodyparts. Light weight will stimulate the slow-twitch muscle fibers in the abs and calves, but it may not sufficiently hit the fast-twitch muscle fibers. Training with heavy weight gets at the slow-twitch fibers and recruits the fast-twitch fibers as well. The Size Principle convinces me that you need to use heavier weight in your training program to optimally develop any bodypart, including your abs and calves.

I suggest you cycle your ab and calf training to incorporate a rep range of Those bodyparts will then be able to reach their full potential, and you should see gains that you never expected. Of course, no one method is the best and only way to train any bodypart. What's more, even a little body fat can blur your ab definition, so any approach must also address diet.

In my experience, there are a number of smart ways to approach your ab training, and others that don't seem to be as effective. You have the most energy at the beginning of your workout. Wait till the end of the workout and you're a helluva lot more likely to walk away without training abs. Another method that works is to train abs between sets of a larger body part. Maybe not on your heaviest sets of legs, but later on in your workout, this strategy is effective because ab training isn't tremendously demanding on your respiratory or nervous system.

In my case, my core is already dominant just from years and years of training, so I train my abs last. Quite frankly, if I miss an ab workout, it's not going to change my life. When you're doing heavy standing movements like deadlifts, bent-over rows, military presses, and Romanians, your core has to work overtime to maintain a safe spine position.

Hence your core, which includes abs, is getting lots of work, even on non-ab days. However, your abs are contracting isometrically for the most part—that is, they're locking your spine in a safe position, but they're not shortening or stretching. Isometric ab training like this builds strength from that angle only, rather than over the entire range of motion. Hence, even if you're doing lots of heavy lifting, it's no substitute for direct core work, but rather a complement to it.

Your abs don't require as much direct training as larger muscle groups such as quads or chest. Like calves or biceps, the abs are a smaller muscle group that doesn't require as much training volume via direct stimulation. Despite their greater percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibers, abs should still be trained in the rep range.

That's something I'd do to train for the cobblestone look that comes from a bulging six-pack. To work the inner ab wall that's not visible, I use static holds lasting seconds. As you fatigue over the course of your workout, you can do movements that are slightly less challenging. If you follow a workout like mine, you can do the static holds vacuums last, or do them between sets of other muscle groups. I have a pool of ab exercises I can do at any given time. Through trial and error, I've found that these moves produce the best results.

I don't need more variety than that to achieve my desired look. Depending on what's open at the gym, I'll do two moves with added resistance and another that's a static hold like a vacuum. In all, I think three exercises is plenty of direct work on ab day. For the upper-ab region, my favorite move is a standing cable crunch. To work the upper abs directly, stabilize your lower body as you curl your upper body down, hinging at the hip.

Visualize doing a cable crunch on the floor in which your lower body doesn't move. A video posted by Craig Capurso During a hanging leg raise, which better targets the lower portion of the rectus abdominis, it's just the opposite: Your upper body is stabilized and you raise your legs up, which curls your pelvis up.