For those of you knowledgeable in the body-building scene:
I haven’t had a good muscular abdomen since college, and that was just the blessing of God because I didn’t work at it! Now, at almost 35, I’ve made up my mind that I’m finally going to get rid of my slightly flabby gut and have a good hard stomache.
A couple days ago I started doing sets of crunches, across left, across right, up the middle. I’ve been doing 3 sets of 50 per day, without having to push it too hard.
My question is, without going to the gym, is this an effective way to go about it? If so, approximately how many sets of how many crunches should I be shooting for, if my goal is hard abs in, say, 3 months’ time?
[quote=“Vay”]For those of you knowledgeable in the body-building scene:
I haven’t had a good muscular abdomen since college, and that was just the blessing of God because I didn’t work at it! Now, at almost 35, I’ve made up my mind that I’m finally going to get rid of my slightly flabby gut and have a good hard stomache.
A couple days ago I started doing sets of crunches, across left, across right, up the middle. I’ve been doing 3 sets of 50 per day, without having to push it too hard.
My question is, without going to the gym, is this an effective way to go about it? If so, approximately how many sets of how many crunches should I be shooting for, if my goal is hard abs in, say, 3 months’ time?[/quote]
First, stop doing your crunches every day. When you exercise, you make micro-tears in your muscle tissue. It takes your body up to 48 hours to repair that tissue. So, if you train them every day, your muscles won’t grow.
Instead, do your crunches three times a week. If crunches are really easy for you, add weight.
Second, the only way you’re going to see your abs is if you reduce your body fat by about half. Ripped abs aren’t made in the gym–they’re made in the kitchen. The whole subject of diet is a huge can of worms, so I won
Crunches don’t do anything (if you want to see the muscles anyway). I’m pretty sure some kind of cross training is what you’ll want to do (running, biking, etc.) to burn fat. Diet change would be good too. My friend’s doing some abs diet now and says he likes it a lot.
[quote=“miltownkid”]Crunches don’t do anything (if you want to see the muscles anyway). I’m pretty sure some kind of cross training is what you’ll want to do (running, biking, etc.) to burn fat. Diet change would be good too. My friend’s doing some abs diet now and says he likes it a lot.
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I’ve read the Abs Diet, and it employes the basic principles I’ve outlined above. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to gain more muscle, burn more fat, and get a hard, ripped stomach.
Thanks for posting this. This is one of my favorite topics and activities.
I agree with everything Danimal posted. Good info there.
I want to add: Weights + cardio (or aerobics) + crunches on the fitness ball. In that order, preferably. The fitness ball is great because you don’t put pressure on your spine and the “gap” in your lower back disappears.
Looks like a lot of good advice.
Some 20 year ago I was in reasonable good shape, with extremely strong legs (alpine skiing). Then I was around 70kg, now around 60kg - and skinny. I would like to build back to around 65-70kg, but in the right places. I am probably old fashioned, but running without being in a hyrry, or lifting heavy stuff without moving it seems unproductive to me - health studios seem to promote these silly activities…
This may seems silly, but think about the guys on the show Survivor in some pacific islands or whatever. After several weeks/months, they all look really lean and/or muscular.
To me, this is a result of their diet and movement.
Diet: they’re not eating as big portions or as often as an average American, nor do they need to. and they’re probably not eating a lot of processed food out there, probably a whole lot more water too instead of fancy sugar drinks and alcohol. So basically, less carbs, less sugar, less salt, more protein (they seem to eat bush meat more??)
Movement: Instead of being sedentary, they’re out doing stuff all day. Of course this is harder to emulate when you have dayjobs. but i would recommend a mix of strength training (to maintain/increase muscle mass) and aerobics (for conditioning, cardiovascular health).
Hey guys, thanks for all the info! While I don’t know if I’m up to changing my whole lifestyle, I’ll try to make gradual changes in the right direction. And I’ll get that book the next time I make an Amazon order!
Danimal it is OK to train the abs everyday, or every other day. Your explaination about micro tears to your muscles when you weight lift is correct, except that it only applies to low reps/high weights, say squatting 400 pounds for 6 reps. It does not apply to abs, when people are doing 50 reps for three sets. Chances are 50 reps of any excercise will not let you grow bigger because that rep range is too high to cause micro tears to your muscles. But then again abs are a special body part, you don’t train them to get bigger, unlike arms and chest, but rather for definition. Hence, the high rep count, so it’s okay to do them everyday.
Having said that I don’t think Vay should be doing ANY ab excercise at all. You don’t need the gym to get nice abs, but your current routine will get you nowhere. One of the most hilarious scenes you can see in a gym is some morbidly obese guy do crunches. It’s the myth of spot reduction and it simply doesn’t work. You will never see a man with six pack abs with flabby arms and chest. Vay, you probably aren’t in that bad a shape, but you did state that you have a pot belly, which isn’t good. My advice is to forget about the six pack and try to lower your total body fat percentage. Getting your abs to show is all about lowering your body fat below a certain percentage, for guys this is around 12%.
Great post, Dead Wizard. However, to really see your abs, a body fat percentage in the high single digits is needed. As some people know, this can take a lot of hard work. Good luck.
Agreed… which is why I suggested he reduce his crunches and add weight.
The whole idea behind adding weight and building abdominal muscle is not based on the belief that your abdominal muscles will poke out more if they’re developed. What I am suggesting is that he needs to build muscle all over his body because, the more muscle you have, the easier it is for your body to burn fat; the more fat you burn, the more your muscles are going to show. This is the basic principle under which most programs like the Abs Diet work. And, assuming you follow it, it does work.
Our abdominal region makes up a large percentage of muscular tissue in our bodies. If it’s true that you’ll burn more fat simply by having more muscle, why not build more muscle here? Why ignore such a large reigon?
A coupla years ago, don’t ask me when, I checked the Guinness Book of Records and saw a picture of the guy, who at that stage, held the world record for doing the most consecutive sit-ups in one day… or something like that. Of course my eyes wandered down to this incredible man’s abdominable region and I was quite surprised and disappointed to see he looked like a jelly baby ‘down there’. No abs! I mean visible abs… nil, zero, nada!! So, what’s the moral of this story? Simple… no matter how many sit-ups or crunches you do, they won’t show if they covered by a layer of flab.
Danimal you’ve got it completely wrong. Yes, it makes sense to burn fat by building bigger muscles all over your body, but one should not do it by doing ab exercises, even with weights. The theory behind this is doing compound excercises over isolation excercises. Compund exercises are excercises that involve multi-joint movements, therefore engage more than one muscle group. Isolation exercises are exercises that involve ONE joint and ONE muscle ONLY. Almost all ab exercises are considered isolation movements, since all ab exercises work on the principle of reducing the distance between the abominal muscles (the one muscle group) and the pelvis bone (the one joint). When you work abs, you ONLY work your abs, you’re not working you chest, arms, legs, etc. If you feel it anywhere else, chances are you are doing something wrong.
Yes, the abs are a relative large muscle group, but it gets worked out plenty when you work on other muscle groups, since it acts like a stabilization muscle. I know plenty of people who have nice abs by just doing compund movements. The biggest muscle group in your body are the upper legs (quadricep/hamstring). Therefore, if there was only ONE exercise I would advise Vay to do it would be squats. Actually, if anyone wants to gain the most muscle mass as fast as possible, I would suggest them to just do squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press, and chin-ups. The five exercises I listed above have been shown to be the most effective movements to build overall muscle mass.
Trainers also recommend starting workouts with warm-ups involving the largest muscle groups. This means chest and quad exercises. This will then involve the whole body, get it going, and help reduce injury to individual parts. (as opposed to just working on individual parts off the bat).
Danimal the question of doing compound exercises over isolation exercises is completely relevant for this discussion. You seem to have lost sight of what we’re trying to do here which is to give Vay advice on how to improve his abs.
We seem to agree on the general issue that have one’s abs show, one needs to lower body fat, and one of the best ways of lowering body fat is to increase muscle mass. So the question then becomes what is the best way to increase muscle mass, which is where we seem to diagree.
Reading your posts you clearly advise him to do ab exercises, preferrably with weights, as part of his daily routine. My position is that he shouldn’t bother with ab exercises AT ALL, and just stick with big compund movements. Now I didn’t say one shouldn’t EVER do ab exercises, heck I do them religiously. But I’m around 10% body fat, and I believe that males with bf% of over 15 can better spend that time doing more effective exercises. Now I don’t know Vay’s bf%, but he states he has a flabby gut, which would clearly indicate a bf% higher than 15, in which case I maintain he should be using that time to do more effective exercises. Also you do seem to have quoted me out of context or just plain out misunderstood me. I am not advocating that one NEVER do ab exercises; if you read me correctly you’ll see that my stance is that one should ditch doing abs if the primary goal is to lose fat or gain muscle. Is it because it doesn’t work??? No, it’s because it’s NOT THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD!!! (actually it’s pretty ineffective). Think of it this way: If a person asked you for advice on how to start a fire do you think telling him to rub two sticks together quickly would be good advice? Sure, it might work, but even so, it’s incredibly slow and ineffective. A better advice would be telling him to light a match or buy a lighter.
That’s the gist of my argument: if you’re fat, why waste time with ab exercises when that time can be better spent doing more effective compund movements?
Again, remember Vay’s time frame is THREE months, which is not long at all.
[quote=“Dead Wizard”] Danimal the question of doing compound exercises over isolation exercises is completely relevant for this discussion. You seem to have lost sight of what we’re trying to do here which is to give Vay advice on how to improve his abs.
We seem to agree on the general issue that have one’s abs show, one needs to lower body fat, and one of the best ways of lowering body fat is to increase muscle mass. So the question then becomes what is the best way to increase muscle mass, which is where we seem to diagree.
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No, I don
