One of the most important parts of having a six pack is actually building your abs up. They don’t usually just appear when you’ve lost enough weight – they’re muscles just like any other and they need to be exercised.
By doing core workouts, you’ll be able to see your abs faster and you’ll give yourself a few other benefits along the way.Ab workouts tend to be fairly straightforward. The most common one that people tend to recognize from gym class is the sit-up.
Sit-ups are decent ab exercises, but they don’t give you quite the same benefits that you might get doing some other, more effective ones. You need someone or something to keep your feet down if you can’t do that naturally, and sometimes they’re a bit too easy.
Instead, one of your main ab exercises should be crunches. Crunches are similar to sit-ups, but a bit more comfortable in some ways, and you see just as good of results, if not better.
Instead of balancing on your tailbone and pulling up your whole upper body, you lay flat and bring up your body just a bit while also pulling in your legs. This helps work out your abs, but it’s a lot better for your back than sit-ups are.
While many people often don’t like doing them, planks are a fantastic ab exercise. If you haven’t done them before, they’re actually quite simple. You get into an almost push-up like form, but instead of having your hands down, you lay your elbows and forearms flat in front of you.
Keeping your back straight and your knees off the ground, you just hold that position for around a minute. This puts a ton of stress on your core and will definitely get you the results you want.
Some of the more fun types of ab workouts are those that involve medicine balls. Medicine balls are those weighted balls you find in the gym that are rubbery and dense. They usually weigh between 2 and 10 pounds, and are typically basketball sized or smaller.
With these, you can do tons of ab workouts that are a bit more enjoyable since you’re at least doing something.One great one, if your gym allows it and has space for it, is combining crunches with medicine ball tosses.
Basically, you do crunches with your feet up against the wall, and when you come up, you toss the medicine ball and have it bounce off back into your hands and repeat. This helps break up the monotony of just a standard crunch workout.
