How to Get Six Pack Abs

Try to keep your legs straight or with the knees just slightly bent when doing leg raises. You can raise your legs higher until they are perpendicular to the floor, but this does nothing for you abs and can cause up to begin swinging your legs up and down which is also bad for the low back.

These can also be done hanging from a chin up bar. Again, be careful with your lower back. When hanging, avoid the temptation to swing your legs up into the “L” position and try to use just the stomach muscles. If you can’t keep your legs straight, it’s OK to start off with the knees bent.

Working the middle abs generally means crunches – the gold standard ab exercise. Curl up in ball centered on you low back and – keeping the knees bent – put your feet up on a bench or just hold them out like a bench was present. Lower your trunk to the floor and lift up till you can touch your elbows to your knees. Repeat slowly. You can do 20 to 30 to get a good burn. Notice that these require a very small motion – keep your chin on your chest and spine rounded.

Crunches are great since they don’t strain the low back and yet work the middle abs well.

If you are lucky enough to have an ab machine at your gym these can be great – but don’t do a million reps. Only 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 10 is plenty. Work with heavier weight if you want bigger – not flatter - abs.

Using behind the neck cable pull down in a kneeing position can also work, but most people do these wrong and end up working the hip flexors and adductors instead of the abs. Get some help from a buddy or instructor to check your form.

Working the upper abs can be difficult – you need to target them by doing fast crunches after you middle abs are already tried. Just when you feel you can’t do another crunch, pull your knees closer and do 15 to 20 fast reps – you should feel a nice burning sensation in the upper belt of abdominal muscle.

This whole routine can be done together to give you excellent results – take only 10-20 seconds of rest between each exercise and try to work to failure.

Estimated time to complete a super set of leg raises, crunches and fast crunches? Less than 10 minutes. That’s all!

You can also add some twists to get the oblique or side muscles on you abdomen. Do them standing and slightly hunched over – again to protect the low back – and use the weight of your swinging arms to twist your torso. Keep the arms slightly bent and try not to make snappy movements.

Once a week is plenty. Why? Because more is not better - especially if you work with resistance training or weights.

Turns out almost every exercise you do with weights causes you to tense the stomach muscles. This works them even when you are not specifically trying to, so no sense in overdoing it.

You can even exercise your abs isometrically by just sucking in your gut, tensing the stomach muscles and standing tall – this can be done anywhere at any time and really works. Not only does in give you a firmer stomach, it helps you to improve your posture- try it!

There are a million variations on ab exercises and most work just fine – just protect your lower back and forget about the six pack – that can only come from a strict diet and strong cardio program that will lower your overall percentage of body fat.

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