It’s a high-quality idea to always begin your calisthenics with an abdominal exercise. Why?
Because most lifters, by the time they get through with the big intense exercises, the last thing on their mind is doing some extra sit-ups. If you set up with it first it doesn’t unfavorably affect your workout, it gives you a first-class warm up and in the end you end up with stronger abdominals over all because when you’ve already worked them, every exercise you do becomes more intense for the rest of the workout.
Now I am not Mr. Six-Pack Abs. I’m not particularly interested in dieting to the level necessary to show that, because that’s exactly what that is…a show. Your abs can look great and still be weaker than pond water. I want abs that are powerful! Just like everything else. And my abs is powerful, because I instruct them for that unambiguous purpose.
Here are some tips on Ab training:
1. Makeup your workout for maximum overall efficiency and total body unity. That means, use heavy movements that force your abs to fire simply by their performance. Read squats, dead lifts, overhead presses. Especially read heavy partial squats, dead lifts and overhead presses. The performance of these exercises forces the muscles of the torso to function in unison with the prime muscle movers of the body. By doing that you create strong abs that can work in unison with the rest of your body.
2. Train them heavy just like the rest of the body. If you want to get beyond simply being able to do repetitive high reps of simply bodyweight exercises (crunches, sit-ups, leg lifts, etc.,) then you’ve got to add weight to these exercises. Heavy weighted sit ups for low reps are an excellent power builder.
3. Train off-center. Using one-armed exercises is one of the greatest ways to overload your abdominals. By shifting the resistance to one side at a time you force your abs to work twice as hard to stabilize the body than they would if you’re using a balanced resistance. Some excellent movements here; One arm overhead presses, windmills, suitcase style dead lifts, barrel shouldering, one-shoulder quarter squats, one arm partial overhead lockouts and squats.
4. Train them Twisted Conditioning-style in point of fact what I mean is to combine your training and don’t go overboard with any particular volume of one style. Do some high reps and low reps. do some bodyweight and weighted work? Do some barbell and odd object lifting. Use some alternative conditioners centered on the abs. Kettle bells, Indian Clubs, Sledgehammer swinging, shovel lifting, etc. Mix them in with heavy work; mix them in with breaking in work.
Sometimes work them first,
Sometimes work them last,
Sometimes work them in the middle
Do the heavy work first, then the staying power work, then switch around and do it backwards. By using this methodology we create the most absolute development of the abdominals that can function in the most ways. To me, that’s the ultimate goal.
