Getting Great Abs At Home
Women are often searching for the best ab exercises and workouts because nothing highlights a physique more than a well-defined core. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed with all the information out there, don’t worry. I’m going to give you the absolute best exercises that can be done right at home for a midsection guaranteed to turn some heads.
Despite all the information out there on how to train the abs, most people still end up going about it all wrong. When the abs are trained the right way, you can easily sculpt a defined stomach in a matter of only 15 minutes of exercise a week. In order to do that though, we have to sort through all the nonsense and BS out there about how to exercise the core, and get to what really works.
You’re about to learn:
1. Why endless crunches are not the answer to getting great abs.
2. Why dancers, gymnasts, and fitness models have some of the best abs and how you can use their secrets.
3. The true cause of stubborn belly fat and how to get rid of it to show off your great abs.
Warning: Not responsible if these workouts make your abs so sexy others start to become jealous.
The Ab Training Mistakes Almost Every Woman Makes
Mistake 1 : Endless Crunches
The most common mistake women make when training the abs is to simply focus on crunches, and perhaps a few other crunching type movements. While I won’t argue that crunches are moderately effective, there’s two big problems.
Problem 1 – Potentially Harmful
Dr. Stuart McGill has extensively studied the effects of crunches on the spine and the results aren’t pretty. Excessive flexion movements (like crunches) can damage and weaken the spine and cause lower back problems. Now while this isn’t an issue in small doses, think about the hundreds and thousands of crunches some women do! This can get ugly over time and lead to some pretty nasty problems down the road.
Problem 2 – Better Options
There are numerous ab exercises (no ridiculous infomercial product required) that recruit the abdominal muscles far more than the standard crunch. The problem with only focusing on crunches and flexion type movements is that they don’t train the core to do one of its most important jobs which is to stabilize the body. That means, to resist movement with the core rather than create it.
Mistake 2 : Not Training Intensely Or With Variation
Dancers and gymnasts don’t get their great abs from doing crunches, they do a variety of movements that incorporate stabilizer muscles to keep the body tight, and then they constantly challenge themselves with more and more difficult movements.
That means exercises like planks and their variations can be some of the absolute best exercises you can do. Also, rather than simply increasing the reps or hold time on a particular exercise, strive to move on to more difficult versions of an exercise. This also makes things more fun. Don’t worry, the abs won’t “bulk up” from doing high strength moves because their natural shape and function doesn’t lend them to getting “bulky.”
The Best Home Ab Workout Exercises
Lying Leg Lift Exercise
Super Secret Tip: Most women have a posture with more anterior pelvic tilt, and this keeps their lower back off the ground during this exercise. Actively push the lower back into the ground (where you can’t slide your hand under your lower back) and feel how much more intense this exercise becomes! If it’s too difficult, you may bend the legs until you become stronger.
The Plank Exercise
If you only do one core exercise, do this! Make sure to keep the body straight and prevent the hips from dropping too low or sticking them up high. Start from your knees if too difficult.
The Side Plank Exercise
The Reverse Plank Exercise
This is intense! Work your way up to this one if you need to.
The V Sit Up Exercise
Bonus: The Glute Bridge Exercise
It’s important to train the glutes as well as the core to keep the body in balance and prevent lower back problems. While glute training is a whole other issue, this is the number one recommended exercise. Do it one-legged once you develop the proper strength.
A Killer At Home Ab Workout Routine
These two workouts are some of the best at home ab workouts for women that can possibly be done. Don’t let their simplicity fool you though, it’s about intensity. You don’t need 20 different ab exercises, or adding in 5 days of yoga and Pilates a week to get a great core. Simply focus on a few basics for a while and really get good at them, and then eventually you can switch things up just to keep from getting bored.
Two Day A Week Ab Workout Routine:
Day 1:
- Lying Leg Raises: 3 sets of 15-20 reps
- Plank: As many sets as need for 120 seconds hold
- Side Planks: 60 seconds each side hold (as many sets as needed to total 60 seconds)
- Glute Bridge: 2 sets of 20 reps
Day 2:
- V-Sit Ups: 3 sets of 15-20 reps
- Reverse Plank: As many sets as need for 60 seconds hold time
- Side Planks: 60 seconds each side hold (as many sets as needed to total 60 seconds)
- Glute Bridge: As many sets as needed to hold top for 120 seconds
Rest as little as possible between sets, start with 1-2 minutes or as much as needed.
Dealing With Stubborn Belly Flab
Getting great abs doesn’t mean a whole lot if there’s body fat covering them up. No matter how many ab exercises you do, that won’t do a whole lot to burn the fat that’s on TOP of your abs.
What’s the cause of stubborn stomach fat?
There are two causes, one is simply all around excess fat. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. A solid healthy eating program that is designed to rapidly burn fat like the Diet Solution or any other good eating program will work to take care of this. You can also check out my post on making quick healthy meals for some healthy eating tips.
A second cause is a hormone called cortisol. Excess cortisol can promote extra fat storage in the abdominal area which is very difficult to get rid of if stress levels are high.
The solution is to manage stress. The book the Sedona Method was really for myself for stress management as well as the Heartmath Solution.
Also, the herb ashwaghanda is really beneficial (very inexpensive as well and great for overall health) for balancing cortisol levels and it’s my “secret weapon” for stubborn stomach fat.
I created a free guide with all of my best tips and tricks for burning stubborn fat that you can download now for free here.
Reader Comments
What are you favorite ab exercises or routines you can do at home?