How Many Days per Week Should I do Abs?

This is a great question and to be honest most trainers and gym goers get it wrong...

Why?

It’s because most people forget that your abs are not some "special muscle group" that need to be worked differently than the rest of the 600+ muscles in your body...

The truth is you should NEVER work your abs every day. You’ll actually do more harm than good and most likely end up with a lower back injury from all those crunches and sit-ups! Plus, your abs will never have enough time to recover and you’ll just end up overtrained.

So here’s the answer:

I typically recommend that my clients work their abs through compound full body exercises that force their core muscles to contract with each rep. These exercises can be done 2-3x per week and they include front squats, swings, cleans, overhead squats, and other fun movements that work your entire body.

The benefit is you’re going to shrink your waist while tightening and toning your abs - something you can’t get from just doing crunches.

I’ll also add in some specific ab movements like chops, knee-ups, hip thrusts, and other traditional abs exercises at the end of certain workouts. However, if you’re completing multi-joint exercises where you’re not seated during the movement you will have no need for more than 1 specific ab exercise per workout.

This equals only 3 traditional ab exercises per week!

You’ll also notice that I didn’t mention a single crunch or sit-up... that’s because they work very little muscle and unless you have hours to spend in the gym you should focus more on the heavy hitters.

Now, before you say there is no way you can get great looking abs with just 3 moves per week I want you to remember 2 things:

1. You’re actually working your abs, obliques, lower back, and entire core with each exercise you perform if you follow my workout guidelines. That means you’re actually tightening your stomach over the course of a whole 20- 30 minute workout.

2. Even if you sculpt great looking abs no one (including the mirror) is going to be able to see them without the proper nutritional program. Since it takes about 25,000 crunches to burn off 1 pound of body fat, you can forget about crunching your way to great abs... To be totally honest, there’s absolutely no point in doing a single specific ab movement if you’re not going to follow a fat loss nutrition plan to shed inches of belly fat off your stomach.

I took a little longer to write this article today because I really want you to know the best way to work your abs for best results. As always I wish you the best results and I hope this information helped!


Stephen Cabral is a national health correspondent with over 10 years of credentials. He holds national and international certifications in strength & conditioning, personal training, yoga and nutrition. For more information go to www.StephenCabral.com