Ab Exercises

What Ab Exercises Should You Do and How Intense Should Your Ab Exercises be

It has been quite a common occurrence to encounter people who have invested lots of their precious time in abs training and yet, have not seen any visible improvement in their abs area at all. This phenomenon is due to the fact that they have either choose the wrong ab exercises for their workout or have worked too much on the same workout exercises.
Having an effective abs workout program is essential in helping you get the 6 pack abs.Choosing what ab exercises should you do and deciding how intense your abs exercise shall be is what constitutes of an effective abs workout program.
Therefore,in this article, I will be covering on what abs exercises should you do and how intense should your exercises be.

Exercise Selection.

A common myth of abs training is you should work your "upper abs" and "lower abs" separately. However . the truth is that, you can't separate working these muscles as they contract simultaneously during any ab exercises.
If you are going for agility , you will need to focus on decreasing your base of support as much as possible. In other words, you will need to focus on ab exercises which requires you to stabilize your ab muscles while doing it. In this way, your muscle fiber tissue will be worked on most effectively, giving you the most workout possible.
Some ab exercises that require stability are as follows :
1) Abdominal work on an exercise ball2) Twisting work standing on a bosu ball3) Partner work with medicine balls.
If you are going for strength and are using weight, you will need to execute movements that require you to move through a large range of motion. By doing this, your ab muscles can be strengthened from the greatest angles possible.
Some good ab exercises for strength build up –
1) Decline sit-ups2) Cable cross-bends
An important point to take note about abs exercises :
Our body has an extremely high adaptation ability towards any exercises. Once your abs muscles have adapted itself to a particular abs exercises, the abs exercises wont be as effective as before anymore. Therefore, we will need to introduce variability in our abs exercises for our abs workout program.Hence, Abs exercises must be changed on a regular basis if you want to see results fast.

Intensity of abs exercises

The intensity of abs exercises varies from individual to individual. Knowing what volume of abs exercises is needed for you brings you a step closer to getting the 6 pack abs.
Bear in mind that  the weight lifted during training is indirectly proportional to the total reps you do. In other words, the more weights you use the fewer reps you should be doing.
If your objective is agility, two or 4 sets of weightless abdominal works will be enough ( with each sets limiting yourself to the 10-15 reps range )
On the other hand, If your objective is strength, you should be doing weighted abdominal training. Therefore, you should be going for fewer reps ( 3-6 reps range ) and increasing the number of sets to 6 to 10. This would be enough to have some good muscle size growth.
Source