What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
So maybe you're one of the guys out there watching Washboard Wednesdays that hates training
their Abs.
Believe it or not, there's a lot of you out there and there's a couple reasons why.
Either you don't like the way it feels when you train your Abs, the burn that you get
is just so unpleasant that you try to avoid it at all costs,
or more likely you're one of the guys that says, Look I've got a distinct amount of time
that I've got available to train each day and that's all I've got.
And if I'm going to do it, I'm going my spend my time getting more bang for my buck.
I'm going to work on my entire body and let the Abs kind of fall where they may.
You don't have to make that decision, you aren't forced to make that choice.
Because I'm going to show you 5 ways that even guys that hate training their Abs can
start training them starting today.
Ok kicking off this list at Number 5 is Staggered Ab Training.
This is really really easy to do because if you think about what it is that you do between
your sets, you realize,
Wow, what a great opportunity you have to do something that you haven't been doing and
that is your Abs.
You could take any exercise, any workout right here I'm demonstrating a Squat.
I finish up a set of Squats and as miserable as it may seem,
I go over here and I do have my rest period to grab onto a bar and do some lower Ab work.
Now my Abs are very rested here, yes they're engaged into a Squat but not to the extent
that you're going to be working them here.
So they're not pre fatigued.
You can go bang out your set here, take a little extra time, get back into your Squats
again.
If you're training heavy anyway, you're going to want to take a little bit of extra time
between your sets as it is.
So why don't you take at least one of those two to three minutes you might be hanging
out in between your strength sets and do a set of Ab work.
Number 4 is something we can incorporate into our Conditioning work and a lot of people
now have found the value
and finally tapped into the value of Carries as a great way of doing Conditioning.
So you can do unweighted, unbalanced Carries and get a great 1-2 combo here.
You're getting your Conditioning effect but at the same time you're really getting a heavy
dose of Ab and Core Stability,
really that Lateral pillar strength because you're unweighting one side relative to the
other.
Maybe 20 pounds on one side, 80 pounds on the other.
Or even higher obviously, if you can handle it.
And work on working on your Conditioning at the same time that you're getting your Ab
work in.
There's no excuse and no reason why you can't make this small little tweak to your Farmer
Carries to get that much more bang for your buck when it comes to your Abs.
Number 3 and the next obvious place to go is to make your Ab training a little bit more
fun.
And we can do that with Explosive Ab training.
Generally the Explosive Ab movements, like a Medicine Ball Throw here or like these Medicine
Ball Slams, side to side,
these are generally more interactive fun exercises.
You become more of a participant in them.
They don't feel as boring and mundane as maybe just sitting there and doing Crunches.
So if you can trick yourself into actually having fun, which is very easy to do with
these Explosive exercises,
incorporating them into your routine for at least even a few extra sets each week shouldn't
be all that hard
and it's a great way for you to kind of sneak in a little bit more Ab work.
Talking about sneaking in some Ab work, a lot of what we do in the gym can actually
instantly be turned into more Ab focused training just by changing the position of our body
in space.
You see our legs are really really responsible for providing stability and support from below.
But if we actually take them out of the equation, we can get a lot more work done by the next
link up in that chain,
which is our Core and our Abs, for adding that stability and becoming a lot more involved
in what we do.
So I'll do basically in overhead work, any overhead work will engage our Core because
we're causing more disturbance up above that requires more stability down below.
And again if we've taken the legs out of it, we can actually get that from our Core.
We could do it here, just by sitting on the ground with our legs out in front of us and
doing our Shoulder Presses that way.
As opposed to having to always having to do them standing.
You can see my Core is much more active this way.
I'm still just doing this as part of my Shoulder work but I'm getting my Abs to be more involved.
Sort of in a way that we never even thought we would.
And we can even take it a little step further than that, jump up on a pullup bar.
You guys know how I've talked about many times, the pullup bar and just hanging in general,
is a great way to instantly engage the Abs.
Our arms are overhead, once again all the work is being done overhead so there's even
more work being done by the Core.
But we can add to it by changing the positioning of our legs in space.
Instead of hooking your feet together and bending your knees back, try to just get your
legs lifted out in front of you just a little bit.
That little bit will engage your Abs even a little bit more, and again, not any real
added expense to what you were doing in the first place.
You're still doing your pull ups, you're still training your back but at the same time now
you're incorporating just a little bit more Core to what you're doing.
And finally sort of what we're known for here for ATHLEANX, it's called Integrated Ab training.
And that's what we talk about putting the Core at the Core of everything you do.
There's no such thing as a non Core exercise here in ATHLEANX.
We can get your Core to work in every single exercise if you know what you're doing.
And as a Physical Therapist, my role here is to make sure that we are letting the Core
do it's job.
Because the Core is so responsible for your stability no matter what exercise you are
doing.
Here's just a couple examples, we can take a Cable Crossover that's certainly targeting
our Chest, but incorporate it in such a way, we call it a 3D Crossover,
where we get our Core actively involved here.
We get a lot of work from both our Obliques and our Abs.
And the same thing can be said here with Shoulder training.
Just by doing a Landmine Twist, we get this first half of the exercises, which is very,
again combining two elements here, very explosive and then again working on sort of integrating
our Abs with our eventual overhead Shoulder Press.
So I can work on combining movements, and really that's what it's all about here.
When you're trying to train like an Athlete, you never really move in isolation.
You combine muscle groups that are meant to work together, you let them work together.
And we have a whole program that does that guys.
Our ATHLEANX Program literally lays out for you, step by step, day by day, exercise by
exercise, how to get your Core back at the Core of everything you do.
Because it's so important for how eventually you will function.
Not necessarily if you have to be an Athlete, but if you want to look like one, you're going
to have to start doing it.
Guys if you want to start following a Program like that, head to ATHLEANX.COM and get our
ATHLEANX Training System.
In the meantime, if you're one of those guys that hates training Abs, I just gave you 5
reasons why you can't use that excuse any more.
Leave your comments and thumbs up below and let me know what else you want to see here,
Washboard Wednesday, once a week,
and I'll do my best to cover what it is you want to see in these future videos.
Alright guys, I'll see you again soon.