Abs Workout: 3 Days a Week

If you're starting to get serious with your Abs Workouts, this is a 3-day split which breaks up your ab exercises into upper, lower & obliques and spreads them over a 3 day period.

Depending on your fitness levels, you can either keep to the 3 days per week or, if you're more advance, double them up over a 6 day cycle so you'd do upper abs on days 1 and 4, lower abs onb days 2 and 5, and finally obliques on days 3 and 6.

We've kept the exercises as bodyweight only so that you could do them at home although you could just as easily substitute some of the exercises for gym machine based ones. However, we've also kept the reps high with minimal rest between sets to keep the pressure on

If you find that you can perform the number of reps easily, increase the number of reps per set & decrease the rest time between sets.

Progression is the key here and if you really find this workout easy, then you need to introduce weights-based exercises to help your progression.

As with all exercises, form is important. With some abs exercises there is a temptation to grab the back of our neck or head and pull yourself forward or up – DON'T! Concentrate on good form. Focus on the muscles that are being engaged and think about the action that they produce. You don't need to be performing situps like a manic circus act to get a good workout!

The Workout

Get Those Abs Working!

3 session. 3 exercises per session.

Rest for 45 seconds between sets.

Reduce this by 15 seconds if you find it too easy.

Session-1 Upper Abs

Straight-legged Crunch (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lie on your back with you legs pointing straight up to the ceiling. Spread your feet slightly. Placing  your hands behind your head, contract your abs and try to raise your shoulder blades off the floor. Do not use your hands to pull on your head and try not to use a jerking motion – keep it smooth.

Bent-Legged Crunch (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lie on your back with your hips & thighs are at 90 degrees and your calfs are resting on a bench or chair. Place your hands behind or at the side of your head and slowly crunch your abs whilst raising your head & shoulders towards your knees. Focus on feeling the muscles contracting. Pause & squeeze at the top and then slowly lower down – trying to keep a contraction in your abs all the way down.

Overhead Crunch (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lying on your back with your feet flat on the floor & knees bent, hold a towel with straight arms behind your head (or a weight if you find it easy)  as if you're stretching your arms out along the floor behind/above you. Keeping your arms behind/above your head, slowly curl your chest towards your knees whilst trying to lift your shoulder blades off the floor. Don't try to raise up to far. Concetrate on rolling your chest towards your belly-button.

Session-2 Lower Abs

Hip-Thrust ( (3 sets of 20 reps) – Laid on your back with legs at 90 degrees pointing to the ceiling. Place your hands out to the side on the floor to help you balance. Use your lower abs to lift your hips off the floor by 'pushing' your feet up towards the ceiling. If you find this easy, you could try to grip a dumbell or medicine ball between your feet but do this with extreme caution and only if you are very strong in your lower abs!

Reverse Crunch (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lying on your back on the floor (or a bench), hands at your side, feet together, thighs perpendicular to the floor. Squeeze your lower abs and roll your pelvis upwards to raise your hips off the floor. You should be aiming to get your knees to be above your chest at the 'top' of your contraction. keep your knees at a 90 degree angle throughout the move. Lower back down in a controlled manner.

Knee-up (3 sets of 20 reps) – Sit on the edge of a bench or chair and grip the back or sides so that you can lean backwards whilst extending your legs out in front of you. Feet together, squeeze/crunch your lower abs to draw our knees up towards your chest whilst leaning forward slightly to accentuate the 'squeeze' in your abs. Slowly push your feet back out and lean back to complete the move. Try to do this with some control rather than ending up with a rocking motion which doesn't work the abs.

Session-3 Obliques

Twists (3 sets of 20 reps) – Using a broomstick or pole, and either sittig or standing, hold the pole across the back of your shoulders behind your head with your hands as wise apart as possible and twist/rotate at the waist as far as you can without using any momentum. Then turn slowly back in the opposite direction until you've twisted round all the way in the opposite direction. Keep alternating sides and try to give the obliques an extra squeeze when you feel them working.

Oblique Crunches (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lie on the floor on your left hand side with your legs resting one on top of the other and your knees slightly bent. Using your right hand to cup the back of your head,  slowly crunch upwards as high as you can (your elbow should travel in a 45 degree line, not straight up). If you can, at the same time try to raise your legs up off the floor, keeping them together, to emphasise the squeeze in the oblique muscles. Return with a controlled motion & repeat for both sides.

Diagonal Crunches (3 sets of 20 reps) – Lie on your back with your left foot on the ground, knee bent at approx 60 degrees. bend your right leg and rest your right ankle on top of your left knee. With your hands behind your head and elbows pushed back, slowly squeeze your abs & obliques by curling your right shoulder down towards your left hip, keeping your elbows back. Do this slowly and keep the muscles tight throughout. Slowly return back to the start. Repeat for both sides.

Introducing splt workouts into your routines will allow you to put more effort into each workout as you'll have longer for muscles to recover before you next hit them.

Have fun & let us know how you're getting on. What works for you?