Abs Training Guide

Abs Training – The Book I Recommend

I have read seven books on abs training and muscle improvement in the last 2 years. Most of these books were reciting the same old training tips and workout strategies, a few of them also mentioned some kind of diet as well. They were good books, worth reading each and every one of them. As I might have mentioned earlier, I’m the kind of customer who doesn’t buy anything that costs more than $10 without doing some research and reading reviews on the item. And I’m extremely picky when it comes to books, since reading and understanding a several hundred pages book takes a lot of time, and I hate wasting my time on useless stuff. So I always choose carefully.

Last friday I’ve bought another book on abs training. It’s called The Complete Book of Abs: Revised and Expanded Edition
. Man, this book totally blew my mind! It’s just what the title says: a 100% complete book, that covers all areas and aspects of abdominal training. Let me tell you some details.

About two weeks ago I was chatting on MSN with an online friend of mine, who’s also into fitness and body improvement (I’ll post a link to her blog in the Blogroll once she has it all set up) . We were discussing the material available on the market that we have learned from. Both of us agreed that 90% of the DVD’s and (e)books were… well, let’s say mediocre at best. She mentioned that she had learned most of the abs exercises she teaches today from Kurt Brungardt’s ‘The Complete Book of Abs’ which was released in 1993. I quickly googled for the book – and guess what? There’s a second, revised and expanded edition of this book. As I was desparately looking for a good book that could actually boost my knowledge, I checked out some reviews and customer comments on the book. As all of them were very positive, I decided to order it on Amazon. It arrived on friday, and yesterday I finally had the time to start reading. 288 pages of awesomeness! There are about a hundred abs training exercises with photos, a full description with difficulty rating. It also tells you the risk of lower back stress for each exercise! But there’s more: anatomy and diets are also discussed, and there’s a whole chapter dedicated to The Mind. It tells you about why, and more importantly how you should keep on working out for months, how to fight laziness and finally succeed. Man, I wish I had this book 10 years ago… Actually, it came out it 1998. And before you think that’s a disatvantage, it isn’t. The human body didn’t change much since then, and fortunately this book lacks the popular (but useless) inventions of 21st century fitness gurus.

So if you don’t have the patience to wait for my blog posts, want to get the information from the purest source or just simply like having excellent books on your shelves, get your hands on The Complete Book of Abs! I’ll post a link to the Amazon review page right here:
The Complete Book of Abs: Revised and Expanded Edition

Tags: abs, basics, book, muscle improvement, six-pack, the best

31.Aug.09 basics, facts, reviews Comments (0)

The Anatomy of Abs Training

I’ve decided to make a post about the basic anatomy of abs training, and more generally muscle improvement. I hope that by understanding how your body works, you’ll get an additional boost and incentive for your training. So let’s start!

We can break down muscles into three main components:

1. The nerves (or neural network) that send signals to and stimulate the muscles
2. The blood vessels that carry ‘fuel’ to the muscles and remove the waste products.
3. The muscle fibers, which do the actual work by contracting.

When you exercise your muscles, the following things happen:

• The blood vessels get bigger in diameter, allowing more blood carriage.
• The nerves create more connections between each other, allowing faster, controlled, more direct stimulus.
• The muscle fibers get bigger and thus stronger.

Your abdominals have tens of thousands of muscle fibers. Any time you do an exercise like crunches, some of these muscle fibers contract, but not all. There’s no exercise for contracting all the muscle fibers at the same time.
A muscle fiber is either fully contracted or not contracted at all. There’s no state in between. If you do an exercise ‘harder’, you actually contract more fibers. When doing the same exercise multiple times, the first fiber to contract is always the first, at every repetition.
So if you do, say, 100 crunches, you contract the same small group of fibers 100 times, but don’t contract other groups at all. Eventually the contracted group’s fibers will burn out, meaning they won’t be able to contract anymore until you give them some time to regenerate. This is not the way to do abs training. It’s painful and inefficient.

The muscle fibers only get bigger if you stress them (make them contract). You must do a variety of exercises to stress all of the abdominal muscles if you want a complete abs training.
Here are the main abdominal regions that you’ll have to exercise in order to get six-pack abs:

1. The obliques. These are the muscles on the left and right side of your abdomen.
2. The transversus. The internal muscle that pulls back the abdominal wall.
3. The muscles around the pelvic girdle. These are supporting your internal organs.
4. The spinalis erectae. It’s actually not an abdominal muscle. It supports your lower back and the spine.

These are the basics that you as a trainee should get familiar with. The exercises I’m gonna show you (probably in my next post) were selected to give you a full, healthy, complete abs training.

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Tags: abdominal muscles, abs, anatomy, basics, facts, muscle fibers, muscle groups, muscle improvement

08.Jul.09 anatomy, basics, facts Comments (0)

Abs Training Basics

There is a huge confusion and misunderstanding around abs training. Some trainers and trainees place emphasis on exercising hard every day, without even understanding how abs and generally how muscles work.
First of all, you have to have a clear goal. Ask yourself this question now: “Why do I want to train my abs?”

Possible answers are:

1. To lose fat from the abdominal area.
2. To develop a nice, visible six-pack.
3. To improve core strength.

Your training methods will depend on your chosen goal. However, the goals I mentioned above are not independent from each other. Keeping that in mind, I’ll tell you now what to do to achieve the one you’ve chosen.

1. How to lose fat from the abdominal area?
Probably the most difficult and most important question in abs training. Let’s face it, most of us have excess belly fat. And most of us want to get rid of it. Well, here’s the trick. Cardio and weight training is not enough. Diet is not enough. You have to do all three of these! Okay, I can hear you know saying “Damn, I give up, I’m too lazy to spend several hours a week in the gym and eat crappy food.” You don’t have to! Here’s what you’ll have to do:

a) Do 10-20 minutes of muscle training 2-3 times a week.

b) Do some cardio ‘training’ once or twice a week. Cardio training can be anything that raises your heart rate by 50%    for at least 10 minutes, including going to work by bike, or playing football with your friends. Making love also counts.

c) Follow a high protein, low carbs, low fat diet.

That’s it. It isn’t hard at all.

2. How to develop a nice, visible six-pack?
This is the most common question related to abs training. If you’re reading this, you’re probably looking for a way to get visible, toned, delicious six-pack abs. Actually, this question is highly related to the first one. It has been said many times, that everybody has a six-pack, but most people have it well-hidden under a layer of fat. That’s true. To make them visible, you only have to lose fat. The fastest way to achieve that, is to follow the points a), b) and c) I’ve written for the previous goal. Sure, you can do it without any muscle training. You can do it even without cardio-training. But to get fast results, you have to do them all. Without muscle training, you’ll get a ‘flat’ six-pack. Without cardio-training, it will take a lot of time to lose fat. Without the proper diet, your muscle development will be slower and/or you won’t lose any fat.

3. How to improve core strength?
This is an important question for people who do some kind of martial arts, or other sports that require strong kicks, jumps and body twists. The answer is: you have to follow the proper abs training program. There are exercises specifically developed to improve core strength. Without getting deep into anatomy, let’s just say that you’ll have to train the lateral muscles of your abdomen as well. The upside is that if this is your goal, you won’t have to lose fat at all. No cardio-training is required. For the downside, you’ll have to do some more muscle training. Following the diet helps, but isn’t necessary.

So hopefully you’ve decided which achievement are you aiming for. Stay tuned, in my next few posts I’ll show you the abs training methods that will help you achieve each or all of the possible abs training goals.

Tags: abs, achievements, basics, core strength, facts, goals, lose fat, six-pack, visible six-pack

07.Jul.09 anatomy, basics, facts Comments (0)