What’s going on, guys.
Sean Nalewanyj here at www.SeanNal.com-www.BodyTransformationTruth.com and in this video today I want to address
the question of how often to train abs.
so this one came up on one of my recent videos from Hugo and he says, “Do I train abs everyday
or even 5 days per week?
How’s the recovery on the abdominal muscles.
So first off I will say that, yes, if you’re wanting to maximize visible definition and
separation of your abs then you should be including direct isolation work for them.
Some people will say that big compound exercises like squats and deadlifts, that these exercise
are enough on their own.
And if your goals are purely strength related then that can be true but if you’re focuses
on getting a reasonably developed sixpack then direct work for the rectus abdominus
is going to help out assuming that your body fat levels are low enough for them to be visible.
And that’s obviously a very key point to not overlooked, if your body fat is too high
then no amount of ab workouts are going to make any difference at all because they’ll
always be hidden underneath that layer of stomach fat.
And ab exercises don’t specifically burn fat of off that area they just train the abdominal
muscles underneath.
So in terms of bodybuilding training and wanting to build up your sixpack, yes, direct ab training
is recommended in most cases so things like weighted crunch movements, legs raises, planking
type of exercises, these are all good ways to go about it.
You wouldn’t just do bench presses for your triceps, so just doing compound movements
for abs, it’s the same idea there.
And the actual here which is, how often should you train abs for the best results.
So as with most things ab training frequency is not black and white and it does depend
on the person but my simple default recommendation would be, assuming there’s nothing particularly
unique about your situation, it’s to just treat your abs like any other muscle on your
body and to train them at the same frequency as you’re currently training your other
muscle groups.
And assuming that you’re a typical natural lifter then that’s going to mean anywhere
from one to three times per week with the sweet spot usually being about twice per week.
Train them in the same way that you train your other muscle groups, so there’s no
need for this crazy, ultra-high rep sets of 25 or 50 reps more than a lot of people do
for abs.
I do recommend going on a little bit higher reps, usually around eight to twelve reps
per set.
You want to make sure that you’re applying sufficient intensity and then just focus on
progressive overload by striving for continual improvement in the amount of weight that you’re
using on your ab exercises.
So same deal there as with any other muscle group.
So just start off with around twice per week as you baseline ab training frequency and
then if you’re abs are a particular weak point that you want to bring up then you can
try increasing the frequency and the volume and see if they respond better by going up
to three or four times a week, or possibly even more depending.
However I only recommend doing that if you’re well passed the novice stage and you know
your body and you know that your abs are truly a weak point that you’re trying to bring
up.
And you’ll usually only know that in the first place if you drop your body fat levels
low enough in order to actually visibly that they can use more work.
A lot of beginners get into this and think that just doing tons of ab work is automatically
going to get them a rip sixpack when in reality they should be really putting all of their
focus on building up and overall size and strength foundation first before worrying
about any sort of specialized training for any particular muscle group.
So bottom line on how often to train abs, all things equal, just start off by training
them at the same frequency as everything else.
So twice per week is a good guide line and then if you eventually determined that your
abs are a weak point then you can increase the ab training frequency and see if that
improves your results.
Pretty simple answer because again, all things equal, the abs should just be treated like
any other muscle and there’s no need to be hitting them every day or five days per
week, unless you can specifically determined that they require additional work.
So thanks for watching, guys.
For more science based no B.S.
training tips just like this along with nutrition and supplementation information to maximize
your muscle building and fat burning programs make sure to check out my Body Transformation
Blueprint System.
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Talk to you guys again soon.