Ab Sculpting

The Do's and Don't's of Ab Sculpting

The abdominals are one of the most often mistrained muscle
group. There is so much confusion out there on how to get lean,
strong, and toned abs. I'll cover a few Do's and Don't's for
training your abs.

DON'T waste your time doing crunches. Although they're better than
nothing, you might as well spend your time and effort doing exercises
that actually do something for you.
If you're a complete beginner or do not yet have the strength to do other abdominal exercises, then crunches are fine to start with. However, if you are strong enough to do better exercises, then that's what you should be doing. Once in a while you can throw them into your regimen, but they should never be the staple of your abdominal workouts.

When do you ever walk around clucking like a chicken? You don't! The only time you ever really do a crunch in your daily life is when you get out of bed in the morning.

DO spend your time doing high quality ab exercises like the Turkish Get Up, the Get Up Sit Up, Ab planks - the ones that have you stress the entire abdominal region with full-range movements and isometrics.

DON'T waste your time or money on those silly exercise gadgets you
see on TV. They eventually collect dust, are used as clothes hangers,
or thrown in the garage with all the other junk bought on late night
infomercials or QVC.

DO vary the reps - do sets of high, medium and low reps. Choose
abdominal exercises where you can only do 1-3 reps. Then sometimes
do 10-15reps, and other times do over 20 reps. Variety is key.

DON'T only do very high reps when you exercise your abs. Doing this is
fine some of the time, but it shouldn't constitute your entire
abdominal routine. There is a myth out there that you have do
to 80,000 reps for your abs to get results. Not true.

Remember - you can train your abs as hard as you like, but if your diet is full of junk food, you'll never see definition in your abs!

You also use your abs in almost every exercise you do - squats, pull ups, push ups, etc. As a matter of fact, push ups are one of the most under rated abdominal exercises you can do!
So it is not always necessary to train abs separately. You get that 'six-pack' from a clean diet and an exercise program that trains your body as a whole.