So, you’re in the constant pursuit of developing a strong athletic core, and a visible set of abs. Let’s be clear from the get-go, only you know where you’re at right now so if you’re thinking this article will take you from 30% body fat to 5% body fat with veins pulsating over your ripped six-pack, it won’t.

Forget all the six-pack ripped selfies and marketing you’ve ever seen, let’s be real for a few minutes and start with some key tips that will help you achieve your body’s potential. If you want to develop athletic abs and drop some stubborn body fat around your mid-section, then read on to find out where most get it wrong, and how you can get ahead.

Mistake 1: Too Much Cardio

You know the benefits of cardio, it helps burn calories and body fat, it keeps your heart healthy, and it prepares you for when you need to run from predators (insert lion, bear, wife, husband, partner, as required here).

But when it comes to having visible muscles, in say your chest, arms, or abs, too much of a good thing can be counterproductive. To develop a good set of core muscles they need to grow and get stronger, just like any other muscle.

Due to certain hormonal and biochemical reactions that occur due to excessive amounts of cardio, your muscle and strength development will be sacrificed in place of other reactions that help you get better at endurance exercise.

When you’re training for anything always remember the SAID principle—specific adaptation to imposed demands. Your body will adapt to the demands you place on it, and it doesn’t care whether that gives you a six-pack or not.

If you want to burn calories and body fat, higher intensity methods spare more muscle and are more time-efficient. Weights circuits, metabolic resistance training, and high strength/power/speed intervals are all good alternatives.

Choose to do longer-duration cardio for other reasons instead, such as your health, when endurance is your goal, or where it might be more suitable in your program amongst other techniques (e.g., to reduce load/impact or allow recovery). Cardio is also great for getting rid of water retention and bloating and will help you temporarily “reveal” some abs.

Mistake 2: You Don’t Prioritize Lifting Weights

While a good fat loss program will allow you to create a slight caloric deficit, and lose stubborn fat, without the need to sacrifice your lean muscle, strength, energy levels or time, lifting weights are key to building strength and muscle.

Your abs are a muscle. Upping your cardio and eating less will cause your muscles to slowly wither away. So just imagine cutting out the weights, the biggest tool you have for building strength and muscle, while upping those things that work against that. It won’t produce the outcome you really want.

Keep lifting weights because they are the biggest muscle sparing tool you have. Don’t change a thing—your sets, reps, nothing. And don’t think there are such things as fat burning rep ranges. Strive to get stronger, even while in an energy deficit, and you’ll get winning results.

Mistake 3: An Overactive Ego and Old School Beliefs

You want a strong, athletic-looking core that performs as well as it looks. But it’s often an afterthought with some ab exercises being thrown in at the end of your regular workouts. Managing your workout schedule without setting priorities is like shooting an arrow randomly and calling whatever target you hit.

Yes, at some point if you fire enough arrows you might hit your primary target, but just think how much easier it would be if you started taking aim right now. Prioritize your target, aim, and fire.

Many of us have an emotional connection with whatever training style we use. It feels good to do the same things over again and expect different, or better results. But if you can put this emotional connection aside, forget the traditional bodybuilding dogma, and become smart in your approach this will be reflected in your results.

We can learn a lot from the car production industry on this one. If Audi or Mercedes took control of the fitness industry, we’d all be walking around looking like Greek Gods right now. That’s because in 2018 we’re better at building cars than we were in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.

Every year technology seems to improve, and that’s reflected in the car you drive. They perform better, they look better (ok that’s open to opinion: 1964 Aston Martin DB5), they’re faster, more fuel efficient, and they’ll get you over 200,000 miles if you treat them right.

The improvements come because that’s because in the automotive industry technology is greater, and they have a budget devoted to research and development. They are always learning from the latest science and developing better cars for you to drive.

Different car manufacturers might have differing opinions and processes, but all have what’s best for you the consumer in mind. Their beliefs have evolved as research and technology have evolved.

Why then is it then that our training beliefs are decades old and developed through traditional bodybuilding dogma? We’re still reading from a 1970’s car manual that has since been updated many times over.

Everyone’s still reading off the same old book and sharing out that information, with professional coaches and trainers just as much to blame. For core training, this typically comprises of high-rep or high-duration bodyweight ab exercises and ramping up the cardio.

The post 3 Mistakes to Avoid for Lean Athletic Abs appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Wheel Outs: Abs, Lower Back, Obliques, Intercostals, Lats, and Shoulders

This exercise is by far my favorite to incorporate into my workout between sets. I can take the wheel with me anywhere and I don’t need a lot of space to do the exercise. Although I am showing a larger wheel in the video, a smaller single ab wheel works, too.

Wheel outs can be done no matter your level of fitness. If you are a beginner, you can start by only rolling forward 10-12 inches while maintaining a rigid core with your abdominals pulled in tightly. Remember to move your body forward. Do not reach forward with your arms because the idea is to get your body in a straight plane from your knees to your shoulders with your shoulders positioned directly above your hands on the wheel. Once you have mastered being able to do this “rolling plank” position for 5 sets of 10, you can begin to challenge how far you can reach your arms after you have achieved the straight plane position as listed above. Advanced exercises should aim for sets of 15-20 full-range reps.

This exercise incorporates the abs, lower back, obliques, intercostals, lats, and shoulders. I love this exercise for so many reasons. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that as you move further from the body, the tension increases and causes the workload on the muscles to be increased. This is how the stresses of real life and athletics actually happen—we need movement, not static holds.

Beginners can do 2-3 sets, and advanced athletes can work up to 5 sets, or more.

Side Plank Raises: Trim Your Sides

This is another favorite if you want to trim your sides and kidney areas. This exercise will make those areas strong and activated. Having a strong core plays a huge role in posture and range of motion body awareness, along with muscle integrity.

Start out with your elbow on the ground (use a mat or towel to soften the pressure), and with your elbow and forearm on the ground, and your hand bracing against the ground, you will align your body on its side with your hip resting on the ground and your feet stacked on top of each other, with your ankles flexed. From this position, use pressure from your forearm/elbow and your feet to push your top hip towards the ceiling as high as you can then return to the ground, tapping your hip and repeating the movement.

It is important to stay aligned and not to roll over and point your navel towards the ground. This exercise mimics a real world motion that you might encounter and strengthens the muscles through a full range of motion. Beginners do sets of 5 reps, intermediate up to advanced can work up to sets of 15 or reps on each set. Do 2-3 sets for beginners and up to 5 sets for those who are advanced.

Reverse Crunch: The One Exercise You Should Do

This exercise is great because it approaches training the abdominals in the order of the weakest to the strongest range of motion. The lower abdominal is a thinner muscle and has less range of motion than does the upper part of the abdominal. As a result, the upper ab tends to be the area most concentrated on in conventional exercises like the sit up or crunch. While both of those exercises are great, they leave out the lower ab. By inverting this exercise, we can train the entire abdominal chain, thereby actually teaching the abdominals to support the lower core and lumbar movement of the spine. If you can only do one exercise for your abs, this is the one to do.

Start out with 2 sets of 10 for beginners, and try increasing your sets before increasing your reps. Begin by trying to do very small movements (as illustrated in the video) where you just focus on raising your hips and tucking, but keeping your lower back in contact with the board. Eventually, the advanced user is going to do 4-5 sets of 15-20 reps in a full range of motion while fully engaging the lower ab and crunching the lower body into the upper body.

The post The Best Core Workouts You’re Not Doing appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Effectiveness of the Stability Ball

The reason I like to workout using the stability ball is that you really get some bang for your buck. You will challenge your entire body while improving core strength and functioning.

Before you start with any of the following exercises, you need to make sure you can actively hold a bodyweight plank for a least one minute. All of these movements will challenge your base of stability, so you must ensure you are ready to perform them. Each exercise is a progression on the next, so take your time to master each movement before continuing onto the next exercise.

Stability Ball Plank

Instructions:

• Create a rigid tension throughout the body from the tip of your toes to the crown of your head.
• Keep your gaze slightly in front of you on the floor, to ensure your neck stays in a neutral position.
• Actively push your hands into the floor.
• Squeeze your butt.

Stability Ball Jack Knife

Moving on from the plank, creating further instability by moving the ball.

Instructions:

• Lift your hips as you roll the ball inwards to create space to bring the knees in to a “tuck” position.
• Make sure your shoulders are stacked above your wrists.
• Maintain tension throughout the core during the movement.

Stability Ball Body Saws

Take your time with this next exercise and start with low reps. If you get tired, your form will likely fail so ensure you have quality over quantity.

Instructions:

• Start with your shins on the ball and find a solid plank position.
• Push back, maintaining the plank so that you roll to your knees.
• Pull underneath the armpits which will activate your lats to return back to the original position.
• The closer your hands are to the ball the easier the movement will be.
• Ensure that you don’t drop your hips and place stress on your lower back.

Stability Ball Pikes

This is the hardest of all the exercises because it not only requires you to have a solid, stable core, it also requires you to be fairly brave as you pike up into a half-handstand position.

Instructions:

• Start in your plank position.
• As your curl forward make sure your legs remain straight and strong.
• Your hips will lift in the air and toes will roll to the top of the ball.
• Make sure your shoulders are positioned over your wrists.
• Slowly return to start position and avoid sagging through the lower back.

Do you like these? Do you have any favorite plank exercises?

The post 4 Stability Ball Exercises to Challenge Your Core appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What really blows my mind, though, is when people who have been in a seated position all day long head to the gym, where they perform seated military presses, seated lat pulldowns, and abdominal exercises with the knees up. All of this reinforcing the bad posture they’ve been in for the other ten hours of the day.

What good are those nice arms if you spend all day sitting?

Almost no athletic pursuits are done from a lying or seated position, so if you have any interest in training to be more athletic, it’s time to drop some of these exercises and replace them with ones that mimic activities you would use on the field.

Build a Bulletproof Core

Rather than subjecting your core and spine to repeated spinal flexion or worse, those bastardized bicycle crunches that everyone’s mom does after a sixty-minute elliptical sweat sesh, let’s start treating the core like the three-dimensional piece of armor that it is.

“Working the core from several different angles and practicing exercises that involve bracing against different stimuli are going to be more effective than endless sets of sit ups and crunches.”

By bracing the entire core and activating the deeper levels of the abdominal musculature, you’ll be able to see results much faster while becoming a stronger and more bulletproof version of yourself.

When ab training is programmed intelligently, the variety of movement is almost limitless, so there’s no reason to stick to your 1982 gym-class crunch. Here are five movements that will get you out of poor posture and help you start training the core.

Standing Rope Crunch

This is the standing version of the more popular kneeling rope crunch. The standing version is more effective because it forces you to tie together the upper and lower body while maintaining tension through the core. Plus, it’s a great way to “feel the burn” without doing fifty reps.

Hold the rope from a high position and step back away from the cable stack. Push the hips back into the middle of a Romanian deadlift position. This is the starting and ending position. Without moving your arms, draw your ribcage down toward your pelvis, and hold the squeeze for two or three seconds before releasing. Do 15-25 reps.

Palloff Press and Lift

This is a staple for a lot of people because it’s a self-limiting exercise that is almost impossible to do incorrectly. If you aren’t tight during a Palloff press, you’ll get pulled over. This is a great way to learn to “turn on” your core, especially if you haven’t been able to mentally get it before.

Start by standing perpendicular to a cable machine with the cable at chest height. Push it away from your body slowly and with control. When the cable is fully extended, lift your arms overhead, again with full control. Bring your hands back down in an extended position before bringing them back in to your chest. That’s one rep. Repeat on both sides for 6-10 reps.

Landmine Rotation With Foot Movement

This is a great exercise to train the core in several planes, and will help you learn to stay braced through a dynamic movement. This is perfect for anyone involved in any rotational sport, if you throw, hit, punch, or swing a golf club.

Set up a landmine or a barbell in a sturdy corner. Hold the end with your arms extended, and pull your ribs down in front to create a bracing element through all three levels of core musculature. Keep the chest up while you drop the head of the barbell down to the right side. As you drop it down, step your left foot toward the anchor point of the barbell so the toe is now facing directly to your right. Bring the barbell back up without losing the core tension, and step the leg back to the starting position. Repeat on the other side. That’s one rep. Do 6-10 reps.

Standing Ab Wheel Roll Out

A staple of guys with six-packs, the ab wheel roll out is one of the best anterior core exercises you can be doing. Unfortunately, the difference between kneeling and standing is fairly insurmountable for some lifters. By using a band for assistance, you can train in this advanced position, and eventually remove the band.

Make sure you only go out as far as you can maintain a neutral spine or hollow body position. As you come back up from the bottom position, try to add an additional crunch movement to stress the abs further. Do 8-12 reps.

Anti-Gravity Pullover (AGO)

This isn’t a standing ab exercise, but your body will be fully extended and your spine should be in a neutral position. The reason I include it in this list is that we’re basically manipulating gravity to provide us with the external stimuli necessary to give us three different aspects of resistance. We’re working on anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion, and anti-extension of the core, which are all integral in keeping your back bulletproof and your six-pack beach ready.

Start by putting your hips on the edge of a bench so your torso is hanging off the bench. To secure yourself, put the bottom leg in front and hook the heel under the bench. Take your top foot and put it in back, and hook the toe under the bench. From here, grab a cable or band hooked about five feet away from your head. Pull the band from eye level down to the bottom hip. Make sure to maintain tension through the core. Do 8-10 reps on each side.

Coaching Cues

When doing ab exercises, it’s more important to keep the form 100%, go slower, and use a bit lighter weight. Most of the tension in the core can be self created, so you can use a lighter weight than your max, but still get a great workout by focusing on squeezing your abs incredibly tight.

If you don’t know what that feels like, try the Palloff press to get an idea.

Become familiar with the hollow body position, which is where you body should be for most of these exercises. Try adding in an additional 1- to 3-second hold at the point of peak contraction. If you aren’t strong enough to hold for 3 seconds, use a lighter weight.

Conclusion

Abdominal training is crucial for the lifter who wants to look good, lift more, and stay healthy. Working the core from several different angles and practicing exercises that involve bracing against different stimuli are going to be more effective than endless sets of sit ups and crunches.

“By bracing the entire core and activating the deeper levels of the abdominal musculature, you’ll be able to see results much faster while becoming a stronger and more bulletproof version of yourself.”

Utilizing these moves will get you out of the sagittal plane (front to back) and will challenge your strength through the frontal and transverse planes. This approach will carry over more to your strength training and athletic pursuits.

Take your core training to the next level by switching in these moves instead of your ground-based ab exercises, and you’ll see improvements in your other lifts, as well as an improved physique.

More Like This:

• Forget Crunches: How to Actually Strengthen Your Core
• 3 Exercises You Should Skip at the Gym
• 6 Best Bodyweight Ab Exercises
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post No More Bicycle Crunches: 5 Smart Exercises to Work Your Core appeared first on Breaking Muscle.