8 underestimated abdominal training tips

A well-defined Six-pack is a goal worth striving for for most trainers. It is therefore all the more surprising that there are only a few athletes who actually achieve this ideal. One of the reasons for this is suboptimal abdominal muscle training, which inhibits the generation of adequate training stimuli. To make things a little easier for you, we have compiled 8 training tips in this article, which are wrongly underestimated by many recreational athletes.

Tip 1 - Round off your back

You may find it difficult to put this tip into practice at first, because in every other conceivable training context you are advised against rounding your back under threat of punishment. However, what is useful for deadlifts or squats in order to generate stability and optimum power transfer cannot be transferred one-to-one to abdominal muscle training. This is due to the fact that your abdominal muscles cannot contract fully if your back remains largely static and straight during abdominal training. This is particularly common in exercises such as cable crunches, as many exercisers tend to draw strength from the hip flexors, which means that the abdominal muscles are only trained suboptimally. Consequently, you should pay attention to the necessary flexibility of your back during every exercise.

Tip 2 - Concentrate on certain parts of your abdominal muscles too

You will no doubt have been told at some point that you cannot explicitly isolate any part of your straight abdominal muscles during your training, as it is a single muscle. Strictly speaking, this assumption is not completely absurd, as it is not possible to completely isolate the upper or lower straight abdominal muscles due to the anatomical conditions. What is possible, however, is to focus the exercise so that the load is increasingly applied to the upper or lower part of the straight abdominal muscle. While cable crunches, for example, are ideal for targeting the upper area, hanging leg raises, for example, are used to train the lower area. In practice, however, this type of focus should only form part of your abdominal muscle training.

Tip 3 - Make sure that you steadily increase the load

Many exercisers wrongly assume that abdominal training can be ticked off with just a few exercises that are always performed with the same number of repetitions. However, if you take a closer look at this, you should realize that this contradicts a central principle of strength training. This law concerns steady progress by increasing the load on the target muscles, which in turn leads to a constant stimulus for growth. Just as you increase the load on squats, deadlifts and curls at more or less regular intervals, you should also do the same with abdominal training, because the abdominal muscles are ultimately a muscle group like any other. To achieve this goal, you have three basic options. Firstly, you increase the training weight. Secondly, you do more repetitions with the given training weight. Thirdly, you can reduce the rest periods between the individual sets.

Tip 4 - Start with a difficult exercise

Even though the straight abdominal muscle in particular statistically has a very high proportion of slowly contracting red muscle fibers, which are primarily predestined for endurance performance, this does not mean that you should train your abdominal muscles with a correspondingly high number of repetitions at a comparatively low weight. In order to make optimal use of the strength potential of the abdominal muscles represented by the rapidly contracting white muscle fibers and to be able to convert this into growth stimuli, you should start your workout with a heavy exercise. Cable crunches are particularly suitable in this context, as you can work with a relatively high resistance without any safety concerns. However, the repetition range should be in the classic hypertrophy range of 8-12 repetitions.

Tip 5 - Keep the tension at the point of maximum contraction

Simply lifting a weight is one thing. However, being able to control it completely and stop it at any point in the movement sequence is a challenge in its own right that only very few recreational athletes are up to. In particular, stopping at the point of maximum muscle contraction also has the invaluable advantage that the growth stimulus to be achieved is significantly increased by the continuous extension of the peak contraction. To illustrate this process, we will compare a set of crunches with a set of hanging leg raises performed with a prolonged peak contraction. In practice, you will find that a set of 20 crunches is much less strenuous than a set of 10 hanging leg raises where you hold your legs at the apex of the movement for 3-4 seconds. It is therefore obvious that you should focus on quality rather than quantity when training your abs.

Tip 6 - Skip the pauses between sentences

In detail, muscle training does not even depend on the number of repetitions with a specific training weight, because all that matters is the tension exerted on the target muscle. This tension should be maintained for as long as possible, which can be achieved by deliberately prolonging the contraction or by significantly reducing the breaks between sets. Pauses can be minimized particularly effectively when training on machines, as this gives you the opportunity to start directly from a stable position.

Tip 7 - Don't let your hip flexors do the work

One of the most common mistakes that is often made in connection with abdominal muscle training is the misuse of the hip flexors instead of the straight abdominal muscles, which of course means that the abdominal muscles are not trained very effectively. To prevent this, it is imperative that you consciously focus on tensing your abdominal muscles over the course of an entire repetition and work from this basic tension.

Tip 8 - Take advantage of the benefits of isometric holding exercises

It goes without saying that the majority of your abdominal training should consist of exercises with a dynamic character. However, as the natural function of the abdominal muscles is primarily designed to stabilize the body, you should always include isometric holding exercises such as the forearm support in your training plan, as this is the only way to fully load the muscles. However, the repertoire of possible exercises is not limited to the forearm support, because with the help of heavy basic exercises such as squats, deadlifts and military presses, you can train your abdominal muscles isometrically, as the abdominal muscles primarily have a stabilizing effect as part of this movement pattern.