Ab Favorites

Written by E.J. Reeves

We all have favorites.  There are favorites foods, activities, people and so on.  Our favorites choices may not be the best, but are convenient or easy.  When it comes to ab exercise selection let your favorites be the best, most effective ab exercises.

It is no secret that hanging leg raises and their variations are my favorites.  

Here is:

#1 Reason: They focus on lower abs. Most everyone will agree that their lower abs need the most work.  Here is a test for you to perform. With one hand pinch some fat at the very top of your abs, then with other hand pinch some fat at around the belly bottom level. Hold both pinches while looking into a mirror. The lower ab pinch will hold significantly more fat than the upper ab pinch. This means that the lower abs need more muscle to be seen through the increased fat layer.

#2 Reason: They are tough to do! Here is why! Your legs are heavy and long, so they lever a great weight on your abs. Next, leg raises have the longest range of motion of any ab movement. Therefore: long range of motion x heavy weight=maximum work performed per repetition.

#3 Reason: Hanging leg raises are the only moves that allow you to view your abs, as they are working, by placing a mirror in front of you. Every gym has numerous mirrors so that you can view your form as you do bicep curls, standing presses, laterals, etc. Few if any use the mirror to check their form and intensify an ab workout.

Hanging leg raises: 

First find a chin up bar that you can hang from. Next place a mirror in front of you so you can see your abs as you work. This is the single most important thing you can do to target your abs. With knees slightly bent, raise your legs to about parallel. At the top of the movement squeeze your abs so that you can see  the most detail in your abs.

Adding a twist of your hips both to the right and left furthers visible ab separation. After a double twist at the top or an extended squeeze slowly lower your legs. 

The numbers of reps, sets, amount of leg bend, hip twists, etc. are totally dependent on seeing the most ab detail while doing the exercise. You will notice less visible ab detail as you start to fatigue your abs. As this happens drop to an easier movement or less reps. 

Here is the descending order of difficulty beginning with the hardest exercise:

 · Hanging leg raises with twist

 · Hanging leg raises with squeeze

 · Hanging knee ups with twist

 · Hanging knee ups with squeeze

Pick 3 of the above moves and superset them for 2 or 3 giant sets. Stop your reps or drop to a less difficult exercise when you cannot see your abs as clearly as when you started your ab workout.

Focus all your mental power on flexing hard your abs with every rep. A giant set consists of 2 or more exercise performed in a non-stop fashion. 

E.G.

· 8 Hanging leg raises

· 10 Hanging knee ups with twist

· 8 Hanging knee ups with squeeze

  
Perform 2 or 3 giant sets two or three times a week. 
  
Some other favorites: since you cannot use a mirror to check your form on these ab exercises, let me highlight what you need to focus on.

Start position

End position

Six Inch lying leg raises: 
Lay down on a comfortable flat surface with your hands slightly under the buttocks. This will tilt your pelvis up and the small of your back down. With knees slightly bent use your abs to raise your feet about six inches off the floor. Hold for a count of one then slowly lower your feet. You should feel the contraction in your abs with as the small of your back pushes down on the floor.

Lying crunches with legs raised: 
With your legs elevated in this fashion, your pelvis will be tilted forward and the small your back will be in contact with the floor. Place your hands lightly on the side of your head. Now lift your shoulder blades off the floor by contracting your abs. As you are moving up do not tuck your chin in but rather look at the ceiling getting as high as possible. Hold at the top for a count of one then slowly lower yourself to the starting position. Do 2 sets of 6" leg raises followed by 2 sets of lying crunches.

When done correctly you will feel it after the 4 sets. Two or three times a week should do it for your abs. Add 1 set of each if you can do 12 or more slow reps of the 6" leg raises and lying crunch. After that you can move up to 1 to 3 cycles of the 3 hanging ab exercise giant sets.

  
Please do not fool yourself with sloppy, poor form reps that have a quick momentum but do not give you Delayed Onset Muscle soreness (DOMS). You should feel it in your abs, 1 to 2 days later if you did anything for them. 

Feedback

Hi E.J.,

I am thinking of working out my body with weights on Mondays. squats, bench, curls and forearms, shoulders etc. and on wed to Friday do chin ups, push ups, bodyweight squats and gripping exercises. do you think that would be a good idea, or do you have a better training program. I would like to keep one day out of a week for power lifting. I am a grappler and would like to have both strength and endurance. plus I want to have big biceps but I don't know if chin ups will do all that. I never did chin ups, but I did them yesterday and I did twenty good very strict reps, I weigh 210. so I think I can be good at chinning. and hope to do one arm chin ups someday. please give me your expert opinion. I am starting my workout tomorrow. so any advice I would love to hear, especially from a pro.

-Alfred

Hi Alfred,

It looks like your workout with weights and your workout with body weight exercises are going to be working the same muscles. Over training can be a real problem and to avoid this I would make either the workout with weights or the body weight workout a heavy muscle building routine and the other to be a light endurance routine. Muscle building should be six to eight reps with four or five sets. Endurance should be twelve to fifteen reps five or six sets. It does not matter which one you pick because after six or eight weeks you would reverse what exercises you did for endurance and muscle building. In addition to this it looks like you are adding a power lifting routine for one day. It is therefore imperative that for your three different types of workouts you have one very light intensity, one medium intensity and only one high intensity. Do not shy away from light and medium intensity, they help stimulate and recuperate your system.

Keep a training log to see what works for you. Usually people push too hard for the first two or three weeks then end up going in reverse or worse still getting an injury. Make sure you change your program every six weeks or so starting slow then increasing only for six weeks. If you repeat this cycle you will see progress and keep from getting injured or over-trained.

-E.J.

Hi Mr. Szczepanik,

I'm a 15 year old boy who really wants to get bigger and stronger. I'm a ice hockey goalie for a junior Tier 1 hockey team, and I could really use a bigger/stronger body to avoid getting pushed around in my crease. I'm 5'10 and only weighs 125. Our school does not have a weights program, so I've been turning to alternatives such as pushups and pull-ups so I bought your EasyChin Bar. However, I would do about 6-8 pull-ups total divided into about 2 sets and I'm maxed out. Can you suggest me a pull-up program/routine that I can follow and handle, and progressively increase the reps. I really need your help! Thank you very much.

-Al

Hi Al,

You can call me E.J., and I am a hockey fan! I would divide your pull up and push up program into three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday for pull ups, and Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays for push ups. I would also divide each workout session into three or four sets of five or six repetitions. If you can do more reps, add a set rather than increasing your reps per set past six. For push ups you will have to make them more difficult by putting your feet on a couple of books to elevate your lower body to put more weight on your arms. Six reps builds strength. The more sets of six you can add the more size you will build. Do not overdo it the first three weeks of your new workout. You will be trying to add more total reps per week rather than adding reps or sets per workout. Try this program for six or eight weeks. Be content on increasing your sets by one or two sets of six for week six of your program. That means if you do nine sets of six in week one, week six would be ten or eleven sets of six. At the end of six weeks you will have to change up your routine. E-mail me then.

-E.J.

You can e-mail E.J. your questions or comments at info@easyeffort.com

Copyright © 2002 by E.J. Reeves All rights reserved.

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