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?

Before we dive into the workout itself, let's have a quick reminder of what we mean by your abs. Whether you call it your 6-pack, your belly, you gut, your midsection, the simple fact is that your abdominals are made up of several groups of muscles and not just 6 blocks as some would have you believe.

Now, if you're a regular reader of the Get Fit Fast blogs, you'll know that you haven't a hope in hell of getting a six-pack by just doing abs exercises. A combination of a good nutrition plan plus a mix of cardio & weight training will all come together into a mid-section that others will gasp at in admiration.

Basic Abs Anatomy

What muscles does this target?

Looking at it at it's simplest, this workout targets the abs in the following groups:

- Upper

- Lower

- Obliques

- Core

Most people only work the upper abs by doing crunches or situps but as you can see, there's more to it than that!

Ok, enough education! Lets get to the workout.

We start the workout with the lower abs as these tend to be the weakest in most folks so you'll be able to call on the other ab muscles to help support you.

The Workout

Warmup: If you've not already done a cardio session, do a 5 minute warmup on the treadmill,exercise bike or cross-trainer.

Lower Abs: Hip Thrust – 2 sets; 10 reps to failure (i.e. do a minimum of 10 reps)

Upper Abs: Crunches – 2 sets; 10 reps to failure

Obliques: Oblique Crunch – 2 sets each side; 10 reps to failure

Core: The Plank – hold for 60secs twice

Repeat the above sequence at least one more time

At the end of this workout, you'll certainly know you've hit your whole midesection. The next day to 2 days, you'll experience some soreness – especially if you're a relative beginner. Don't worry, this is just delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) which is simply your body adjusting to the demands you're now placing on these muscles.

Remember that killer abs and an amazing six-pack can’t be get by exercise alone. You need to be looking at less than 10% body fat for most people to have a visible 6-pack.

That said, the benefits of a strong core and abs region are more than just cosmetic! One of the major contributors to lower back problems is a weak core or excessively large stomach.

As with all exercises, take care & use correct form so that you avoid injury. The Hanging Pike exercise is quite an advanced move so if you’re a beginner you should leave that out.

Depending on your fitness levels you should look to have a rest period of up to 60 seconds between sets and up to 3 minutes between each exercise.

Hanging Leg Raise

Hanging Leg Raise

The Top-5 Abs Workout:

1 set of 12-15 reps of Hanging Leg Raise
1 set of 12-15 reps of Decline Reverse Crunch
1 set of 12-15 reps of Exercise Ball Pull-In
1 set of 12-15 reps of Hanging Pike (beginners substitute this with a core exercise such as the Plank)
1 set of 12-15 reps of Exercise Ball Crunch

Repeat the circuit 1 0r 2 times more depending on your fitness levels

If you do this properly, you should certainly know you’ve hit your abs the day after !

*Source: bodybuilding.com

Given that your core twists, turns, bends and stretches its way through your day, why restrict your training to sit ups and leg raises? Go for a more comprehensive approach to abdominal training, and indeed to whole body training, and you will find that your strength and lean muscle develops in a more even way, rather than centering around one or two muscles and movements. Here’s one or two ideas to think about to keep your abs workout fun and effective:

Yoga

I would advise almost anyone, competitive athlete to weekend gym warrior to undertake a regular program of stretching. Flexibility and suppleness are great ways to keep your body young, and the poses in yoga can do a great deal to improve core stability and strength.

The Plank is a Superb Core Muscles Exercise For Your Abs

The Plank is a Superb Core Muscles Exercise For Your Abs

Yoga is also an excellent way to recover from a hard gym session. Stretching will bring extra oxygen to muscle fibers without putting a heavy strain on them, aiding the recovery and development processes.

You can also incorporate yoga-style poses into your abs routine. “The plank” is an excellent example. It is similar to the press up position, but with your arms bent, and your weight supported on your elbows. Keep your back straight and your head and neck in line with your spine, and hold the position for 30-60 seconds. You will fell your abdominals slowly tense during the exercise, while you support your weight with the ancillary muscles.

Pilates

Pilates is similar to yoga in that it concentrates on breathing, although it is more dynamic and exercise based, although stretching also plays and important part. It uses various apparatus and concentrates heavily on core strength.

Classes like these can be a great addition to your fitness program. They are more social than training on your own, and can be excellent as a method of motivating you to get in to the gym. They also tend to ensure that you warm up and warm down properly – if you are training on your own, if you are anything like me, warming up and down, and stretching may only be given passing attention. They can also be an excellent source of new exercises and healthy training habits for your own program.

Circuit Training

For those of us who prefer a boot camp approach, circuits can be an excellent addition. Circuit sessions can vary widely in content, but they tend to concentrate on short bursts of effort on a circuit of different exercises. They usually include sit ups and leg raises, but they tend to be for the development of cardiovascular fitness and strength endurance, rather than specifically for building strength and lean muscle. Nonetheless, you will get the group motivation factor, and the added fitness benefits will make your overall fitness program more rounded and comprehensive.

Train With A Partner

Ab workouts with a partner can add an extra dimension. Get your partner to push your legs back down during leg raises to add extra resistance. He can push then in any direction to improve your reaction time, and put added emphasis on your ancillary muscles, particularly your obliques. Or try passing a medicine ball back and forth at the top of sit ups. Another good exercises is performing twists back to back with your partner while passing the medicine ball in a continuous circle. Excellent for the obliques and serratus. Just get “Eye of the Tiger” on the sound system and crack on!

Wrapping It All Up

In the last few blogs, I’ve tried to summarize the basics of the crunch movement and the leg raise movement, and talked about some of the ways you can incorporate them into your program. Start with the basics, and make sure you can do them properly before you move on to anything more complex. That way you will know your abs are getting the best workout, and that you are minimizing the risk of injury. After all, a lower back injury can have a big impact on your life, even if it is not severe.

And just like any element of your fitness program, don’t get stuck in a rut. Think of fun new ways to train and methods that will keep you interested and wanting to come back for more – that is the true secret to fitness success. And if you run out of ideas, why not ask me and fellow members by posting a question as a comment?

Leg Raise Basics

As with sit ups, leg raises seem like a simple exercise, but there is plenty that can go wrong which could result in lower back injury. So, to get it right, go back to basics to start with and start with the movement on the floor.

Leg Raise Basics - Hands At Your Side, Point Your Toes, Legs Straight And Raise Slowly To Hit Those Abs!,

Leg Raise Basics - Hands At Your Side, Point Your Toes, Legs Straight And Raise Slowly To Hit Those Abs!,

Lay down on your back with your hands by your side. I like to put the side of my hands, i.e. my thumbs and index fingers just under my backside as it keeps your upper body still, and also raises your backside a little, putting your lower back in a slightly more neutral, supported position.

Point your toes to encourage your legs to remain straight and together. From that position, use your abdominal muscles to raise your feet, keeping your legs straight, toes pointed all the through the movement. As you feet come up through a circular arc, once your legs are making a 45 degree angle with the floor, you will feel the level of resistance start to reduce, until you reach 90 degrees when you will feel almost no strain on your abdominals, similar to the top of a sit up. The optimal range of movement is from the floor up to around 45 degrees to 60 degrees so that you have constant resistance on your abdominal muscles. Feel for the point where the movement moves from resistance to rest, and use it as a reference point to return your feet back down to the bottom of the movement.

There’s not too much that can go wrong with a leg raise on the floor, compared to sit ups. Be careful to keep your legs straight throughout the exercise. There are leg raise exercises you can do with bent legs, but for the moment we will concentrate on straight legs, as that offers the greatest resistance.

Add More Resistance

There are a number of varieties of this exercise. Once you have mastered the basic movement, try it on an exercise bench. Lie lengthways along the bench with your backside near the edge. Grasp the bench near your head, and then perform the movement. The elevation of the bench allows you a greater range of movement, which lets your abdominals extend further. Bear in mind that your legs represent quite a long lever, and moving them in this way can put a strain on your lower back, and working from a bench can increase that risk. Concentrate on contracting your abs and if you have any doubts about your lower back, don’t risk it, and instead, work with bent leg exercises, which will cause less strain.

For added resistance, put a light dumbbell, or medicine ball between your feet. Also try hanging leg raises for the ultimate in resistance for your lower abdominals. If your grip is giving out before your abs, either work on grip and forearm strength, or buy some wrist straps to help you hold on.

Bent Leg Raises

Bent legged leg raises are similar in execution. Same starting position as straight leg raises. Instead of lifting your feet up in an arc, start with your feet slightly off the ground and bend your legs until your thighs are perpendicular to the ground. Most of the resistance in this movement comes when you straighten your legs back to the starting position. This exercise is probably best performed in the hanging position, where you should lift your knees as far as you can get them the fullest range of motion and contraction possible.

Leg raises are an excellent exercise to train your lower abs, and your hip flexors. If you are new to the exercise, consider starting on bent leg variations before moving onto straight leg. As I said at the beginning of the series, ab exercises on their own will not give you a 6 pack, but done properly, they can add a great deal to your core strength and stability. Concentrate on correct form before complicating any exercise and you will know you are working toward your goals without unnecessarily risking injury.

In the last article in this series, I’ll wrap things up with a look at some alternative and fun ways to work out your abdominal muscles.

As I said in previous blogs, trainers tend to want to use gym apparatus to train their abs, rather than doing plain old floor exercises. That’s fine in principle, but the more moving parts and variables you have in an exercise, the more chance there is that something will go wrong.

The first thing to remember when you are doing crunch or ab curl exercises is the basics of the movement and what you are trying to achieve (covered in Training Your Abdominals – Part 2) and keep them in mind, regardless of whether you are on the floor, the stability ball, or the ab board, or whether or not you are using added resistance.

The Decline Board Or Ab Bench Looks Like A Weight Bench

The Decline Board Or Ab Bench Looks Like A Weight Bench

Decline Board

The decline board looks like a weight bench, but is sloped and has a cushion at the top for you to slip your feet under. Sometimes they include a triangle to put your knees over, which can help flatten your back and protect against hyper extension at the bottom/beginning of the movement. Put simply, it is designed to allow you to do sit ups uphill, holding you in position by your feet. It is meant to make the sit up harder, using gravity as resistance. Other than that, it is the same exercise.

Setup

When you are using the decline board, set it to a sensible angle. I often see trainers setting it to near vertical. What tends to happen, is that they do not go fully back to the board (or anywhere near it), meaning that their range of movement is very restricted. Make sure when you set the board up that you can get to the bottom of the movement for the full range of movement. Better to set it to a shallow angle and perform the exercise properly with good form, than set it to a wide angle and perform the exercise poorly.

Performing The Exercise

Perform the exercise under control. Explosive movement is fine, but your abdominals should be under strain, and in control of the movement at all times. No bouncing off the bottom, or holding on to your legs at the top for a breather and a cup of tea.

In my opinion, your hands should either go on your legs or arms crossed, with finger tips touching your shoulders, but there is no hard and fast rule. If they are there, you don’t have the temptation of grabbing your head and wrenching it forward to create the momentum to sit up – definitely a bad thing. It is you abs you are training, not your biceps and neck, and if you put your neck under strain like this, injury is the likely result. Also you are more likely to hyper extend your back if your hands are on or around your head. Wherever your hands go, keep them there. Any attempt to throw them forward to create momentum will result in poor form and greater risk of injury. If you find yourself having to do this to sit up, either you are attempting to do too many sit ups, or the angle of the board is too steep.

Adding Weight

Similarly, if you are using a weight or a medicine ball, keep it in one place. I recommend 1 of 3 positions: either under your chin, on the tip of your nose, or on your forehead. Holding the weight on your chin is the safest place, as the further toward the top of your head you go, the greater the resistance, but there is also greater strain on your lower back. It is important to keep the weight still so that the resistance is constant. I often see trainers move the weight toward their waist on the way up, and then return it toward their chin on the way down. All this does is make the sit up easier on the way up – the momentum of the weight going forward pulling you up rather than your abdominals, and then puts progressively more strain on your lower back on the way back down.

How Many Sets & Reps?

The amount of sets and repetitions of crunches you do depends largely on your goals, but remember, crunches, especially on a decline board is a resistance exercise. They can form part of a cardio circuit also, but we are really talk about an element of a resistance workout routine here. If you are looking to build strength in your core and develop lean mass, I would recommend a repetition range of 8-15, for 3 or 4 sets as general guidance, but I would seek specific guidance, for example on the forum, on the right blend to meet your needs.

In my next blog in this series, I’ll talk about the stability ball.

The Swiss ball adds a number of additional elements to simple floor exercise crunches. Firstly, as the name suggests, the stability ball forces you to stabilize yourself on an unstable platform. This makes you, almost unconsciously use all your core muscles to remain horizontal on the ball. The other advantage that a Swiss ball can have is that it can give you a greater range of movement, safely, when you are performing a sit up. When you do sit ups on the ground or on the floor, there is more risk of lower back injury. The ground, or a board is flat, whereas your back is curved, and as you reach the bottom of the movement there is a greater risk that you will hyper extend your lower back. As you reach the bottom of the crunch movement on a Swiss ball, the ball tends to mold to match the curvature of your spine, which allows it to be supported while the tension remains on your abdominals. This allows a greater range of movement, training your abdominals from a full extension through to contraction, and makes a great exercise in anyone’s ab workout routine.

Position On The Ball

When approaching the Swiss ball, let it go find its natural point of rest. When it is steady, choose a point just under the pinnacle and sit on it. Your feet should be a little wider than shoulder width apart so that you have a stable platform, but not too wide – you need to let your core muscles do some of the work of keeping you stable.

Down…

As With The Floor Sit Up, Your Hands Should Be Crossed And Touching Your Shoulders

As With The Floor Sit Up, Your Hands Should Be Crossed And Touching Your Shoulders

As with the floor sit up, your hands should either be crossed and touching your shoulders, or on your thighs, ensuring that you do not pull on your head to create momentum. Allow yourself to extend backwards, using your abs to control the speed of your descent. As you go down, you should be able to feel the ball moving into the small of your back, and you may also feel the ball move forward slightly as your centre of gravity shifts back. Go down as far as you are comfortable with and feel your abdominals extend – there is no floor there, so if you allow yourself, you will continue back past the horizontal, and while the ball will support your back, it is by no means a guarantee against lower back injury. Break yourself in gently if the movement is new to you, and as you feel more comfortable, you can go further back in small increments.

…And Up!

Come up allowing your abdominals to do the work, not your lower back, and avoid bouncing or throwing your arms forward to create momentum. Keep the movement controlled and as you come back up, bear in mind that your legs are parallel to the ground, so you won’t get the same feeling of completing the repetition as you do when your elbows touch your knees when your legs are bent on the board or on the floor. Feel for the point when the load comes off your abdominals, i.e. just before you reach the point where you are vertical, and then start the return back down to the bottom of the movement.

Adding Weight

You can also do crunches on a Swiss ball with a medicine ball, dumbbell, or weight disc to add extra resistance. See Training Your Abdominals Part 3 for general principles of where to hold the weight, but most importantly remember that the higher you hold it, the more resistance there is, and the greater the strain on your lower back, and wherever you choose, keep the weight static so that the load remains constant on your abs. Bear in mind also that any weight you use you feel heavier than it would on a stable surface, because you will be working harder to keep yourself stable. You will realize that very clearly a day or so after the exercise – the first time I used weight on the Swiss ball, I had some fairly major DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) because you really do work all your core muscles through a greater range of movement than you normally would on the floor or any other stable surface. Try it!

In my next blog on abs, we’ll talk about leg raises – one of the most effective way to train your lower abdominal muscles.

Often a medicine ball is used, sometimes a weight disc to add more resistance. There is nothing wrong with using these tools in principle, but like anything else, the more parts there are, the more capacity there is for things to go wrong.

Back to Basics

Get the Feel of How a Sit Up Works and How it Works the Abdominal Muscles

Get the Feel of How a Sit Up Works and How it Works the Abdominal Muscles

Before you go back to the board or the ball, re-acquaint yourself with how a sit up works. Lie on your back with yourfeet flat on the deck, about 12 inches from you backside, knees bent pointing up to the ceiling. Now, put your hands on your thighs and gently curl your torso so that your hands, staying in contact with your legs, move up toward your knees. That is the basic movement – simple eh? Feel the way the work is being done and the load is being borne by your abdominal muscles. Not by hands behind your head, not by your lower back. When you return back to the lying position, pause a second and then start the movement again, but instigate it from your abdominal muscles, do not make the mistake of bouncing off your lower back or shoulders to create the momentum to sit back up.

The aim is to keep a fairly constant, albeit variable load on your abdominal muscles. If you sit too far up to the point of being vertical, there is no longer any load on your abs. If you lie back down completely, again, you have stopped the exercise, and more dangerously, you run the risk of hyper-extending your back and jerking it back when you re-initiate the movement. Keep your chin close to your chest and keep it in one position to prevent the “nodding dog” or “head banging” effect of jerking your head forward to create momentum to sit up.

Keep the sit up simple, and eliminate as many moving parts as possible in your body, and you will perform a tight movement that emphasizes the body part you are trying to train, i.e. your abs. Keep the movement steady and under control and concentrate on contracting your abdominals and nothing else – not your neck, not your lower back, and not your hands or arms pulling you up or creating momentum – just your abs.

Now, if you can master this movement, and more importantly commit the feeling to memory, you have the basics in place to move onto other crunch and trunk curl exercise, as the same principles apply whether you are on a board or on a ball (although there is greater scope for a greater range of movement on the ball). Remember what you are aiming for – abdominal load and contraction, and equally importantly, remember what to avoid – lower back strain, and disco dancing with your hands and head to create momentum. Remember these principles and you will perform a movement that will bring maximum benefit to your core, and equally importantly, reduce the chance of injury to your lower back and neck.

In my next blog ‘Training Your Abdominals – Part 3′, I’ll talk about using the stability ball, the decline board and a couple of other ab workout toys as you learn how to build a killer ab workout routine into your fitness program.

If you go into any gym, you will see a wide variety of exercises being performed that are supposed to be for training your abs. Decline boards, stability balls and various other gadgets are all employed to give you a more effective workout, and many promise to give you the kind of “washboard abs” that are always displayed on the cover on Men’s Health magazine.

First of all, let’s deal with a common myth. Including all of the sit ups in the world into your workout routines will not give you visible abdominal muscles. A 6 pack is largely the result of 2 factors, namely a low body fat percentage and genetics. In other words, some people have the type and shape of abdominal muscles that tend to be more visible. Secondly, if you have a layer of fat over your ab muscles, you can have a very strong core, but you will not be able to see clearly defined abdominals. Just because you can’t see your abs does not mean that you are fat or overweight, but if it is important to you that you can see your abs, the first place to start is to lower your body fat and the only way to do this is through a good fitness program couple with a well thought-out diet and nutrition plan.

Using a Stability Ball in Your Workout Will Add Strength To Your Core Muscles

Using a Stability Ball in Your Workout Will Add Strength To Your Core Muscles

Personally, I think that well defined abs are nice to have, but they are not the be-all and end-all. It is far more important to have a strong core as it effects so many of the things we do in our lives. Your abdominal muscles effect your overall stability, and maintaining a strong core will also help ensure a strong and healthy lower back. The abdominal element in your program should be designed to train your abdominal muscles and all the ancillary muscles that govern stability.

That is why stability balls and wobble boards have become so popular. All the adjustments that you make on the stability ball or wobble board to keep your balance help to train all the anicilliary muscles around your abdominal muscles, like your obliques. It is important that all of these muscles are trained for a properly developed core. If you concentrate too much on straight sit ups, that is basically all your body will be good at, and you will leave yourself open to weakness in other areas.

Remember also that sit ups or crunches are not the only exercise you can do to train your core. Crunches tend to emphasize the upper abdominal muscles, while leg raises emphasize the lower abdominal muscles and hip flexors. These can be done on a bench, or you can do hanging leg raises from the pull up bar with your legs bent or for more difficulty, keep your legs straight. Also, heavy, compound movements will also train your abdominal muscles. Exercises like squats rely heavily on core stability and the abdominal muscles to keep the bar on your shoulders, and to control your upper body during the lowering and raising of the weight. Other compound exercises that are good for your abs include power cleans, standing military press and dead lifts.

Sit ups are only the beginning as far as training your abdominals are concerned. Look for a healthy measure of variety when choosing exercises for your core, and you will be far more likely to train all your core muscles properly, rather than emphasizing those “beach muscles”. You may also want to consider incorporating some yoga into your program, or a couple of yoga positions to enhance stability – the plank, for example is a superb exercise to build up core strength. Variety is the spice of life in the gym – it will keep you interested, and it will allow your body to develop in a more balanced way.