Lee Hayward: Hey, it's Lee Hayward here from LeeHayward.com. In this video clip, I'm going to show you a complete ab training workout routine. I am getting a lot of emails lately over you know, through my video subscribers and things like that, people asking me when I'm going to put out an ab training video clip. So that's exactly I want to do. I went into the gym today and film some of my favorite ab exercises and I am going show them to you right here now on this video clip along with some tips and suggestions that you can use with regards to the sets and the reps and things like that because there is a lot of misconception out there when it comes to ab training. Hopefully, I'll cover a lot of that in this video clip.
The first thing that I want to cover here before actually get into the nitty gritty details of the exercises is when it comes to ab training and getting six pack abs, your body fat level is more important than anything else; I mean virtually everybody out there has six pack abs. The problem is as for 99.9% of the population, those abs are just covered by a layer of body fat. So, in order to see your abs, you need to lose the body fat first and this is done through diet and cardio and things like that in order to burn up the body fat and get the skin around your mid section really thin, so that you can see the muscle definition underneath. So, anyway, I mean that, that there is a topic for another video all entirely, but in this video clip right here, I'm going to focus on the actual ab exercises that you would do in the gym.
The first exercise that I like to do in my ab workout is the decline bench sit up. This is one of my personal favorites because it hits the entire abs, you'll work your upper abs, your lower abs as well as your obliques and your hip flexors. This is a great exercise because it provides enough resistance that you can just use your body weight and still get a great workout. I usually do about 25 reps per set when I do the decline bench sit up. Now obviously the number of reps you'll do depend on your own individual conditioning. But when you're doing ab exercises, I wouldn't recommend going any higher than 25 reps per set. If you're doing like hundreds of sit ups or hundreds of crunches, you're just going through the motions with them and you need to do more higher intensity exercises.
After decline bench sit ups, I like to move on to leg raises. This is a fantastic exercise that really targets the lower abdominals and the hip flexors. So, I do these just by lying on the floor and I'll place my hands underneath my hips to help stabilize and balance my body. Just keeping your legs straight, lift your legs all the way up until they're straight up in the air, and then slowly lower them back down. I usually shoot for about 25 reps when I'm doing leg raises. As for the sets, typically, I'll do between two and three sets of this exercise. A more advanced variation of the leg raise could be done on a leg raise station or even hanging from an over head chin-up bar and just lifting your legs up that way.
Now, I'm going to move on to the over head cable crunch. I'll do this on a lat pulldown station and I'll face away from the lat pulldown machine and raise the back of my legs against the knee pad and grab the overhead handle with reverse grip. You simply just crunch down as far as you can really contracting your abs. Now with this exercise, I'll do fewer reps because it's a weighted exercise, so I'll typically do between 10 and 15 reps with this movement. Again, you don't want to go too heavy because you'll find it hard to maintain good forming and get that mind-muscle connection throughout your midsection, but at the same time you don't want to go too light and do too higher reps. I find between 10 and 15 is the sweet spot for this exercise. Again, I'll do between two and three sets of the movement.
The next exercise is v-ups. Some people also call it frog kicks, as you tend to kick your legs in and out just like a frog would while swimming, but this is a great exercise that'll really work the upper and lower abs. When you bring your body together, you feel your upper abs contract hard, and then as you extend your legs back out, you'll really feel the stress in the lower midsection. Because this is a body weight exercise, I'll typically do between 20-25 reps and 2-3 sets of the movement.
Now, I'm going to move on to stability ball crunches. I'd to save this exercise for later in my abdominal workouts because there is not a lot of resistance with this movement. I find that I if do them too early the exercise is too easy, so I like to save them for later on when my abs are already pre-exhausted from the harder exercises. The key with this exercise is to get a full range of motion. I am like doing crunches on the floor where you can only go back until your back in flat, you can actually go back here and arch your back backwards and get a full stretch throughout the abs. So, I'll do this exercise and this maybe one exception where I might go higher than 25 reps. I'll typically shoot for about 50 reps for this exercise and again, I save it at the end just as a finishing movement.
The final exercise that I'd like to do in my abdominal workouts is holding the plank position. Now this may not look like much, but it's actually a pretty tough exercise especially, when you've pre-exhausted your abs with all the other exercises that we done in the beginning. With this, you just prop yourself up on your elbows and on the balls of your feet as you see here in the video and hold the position for at least a minute or two.
Well, they are some of my favorite ab exercises right there. Now, if you wanted to follow all these exercises, you can do probably like two sets of each movement and that will be a total of 12 sets for your abs, which will be a fantastic workout or if you prefer, you can just pick a few of these exercises and do multiple sets of each one. There is really no right or wrong way to go about it. The abdominals are just stabilizer muscles that support the core. They're not major muscle groups like the chest, back, and legs where you'd really want to focus on heavy progressive overload training.
Like I mentioned in the beginning of the video, the key to getting ripped six pack abs is by losing the body fat through diet and cardio. Doing more ab training in the gym is not going to speed up your progress, but if you would like to know how body builders diet and train to get those ripped six pack abs, then I suggest you go to my website and check out my new book and DVD program titled 'your first body building competition'. Now even though this course is designed for competitive body builders who want to get ripped for the stage, the same techniques apply for anybody, who is looking to lose body fat and get a lean athletic physic. So, whether you're looking to get ripped for the stage or just ripped for the beach, the same training principles apply.
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