How you should train abs is actually a lot different than how you should train other areas of your body.
Want better glutes? Train them heavy and train them often.
Want nicer arms? Same thing.
But if you want a smaller waist – training abs heavy with high frequency may be the worst thing you can do.
When it comes to training your abs, there is a right way and wrong way to do it. Are you guilty of any of these top abs-training mistakes? Find out!
Doing Too Many Reps
There is no need to do 50, 100 or thousands of crunches each day. Many people do more, thinking it will help them spot-reduce (lose fat) from the belly, but that is a myth. In fact, if you are doing your exercises correctly, 8-15 repetitions are all that you need to target those muscles and get results. Here's an easy rule: Train the abs like you would any other muscle, which typically involves 1-3 sets of 8-20 repetitions per exercise.
Training Your Abs Often
I had a new client start a while ago who told me that her previous trainer had made her train abs every session, and she couldn’t figure out why her midsection was bigger despite getting leaner everywhere else.
It’s because she was building muscle there and, as discussed in the previous section, muscle equals size.
If you train a muscle frequently, it will grow. So for the same reasons you don’t want to train your abs heavy, you probably shouldn’t train them frequently either.
Your abs already get a lot of stimulus from other training. Exercises like overhead presses, push ups, pull ups, squats, and deadlifts all involve your core. If you are following a good exercise program, you don’t need to start doing even more ab training.
Believing in Belly Fat Burners
Can specific foods, nutrients, diet pills or supplements really target belly fat and help you melt it away? Probably not. There is some research to show that certain nutrients may help people lose more belly fat, but most of this "research" is sketchy at best—poorly controlled, poorly designed, and not well replicated. It'd be nice to think that you could just eat an exotic berry or pepper—or pop a pill that contains them—and melt away the inches from your waist, but don't fall for this hype. The person telling you that any food or product can burn fat from your belly has one goal in mind: selling you something. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
Training Obliques
Obliques run up and down the sides of our midsection. It’s an area that most women train without understanding the implications for their physique.
Two of the most common oblique exercises that I see women doing in the gym are:
Standing side bends holding a weight, and
Side bends on the reverse hyperextension machine.
Remember think strategically about where you want to build muscle and size.
The ideal female figure is an hourglass shape. With the hourglass, the shoulders and hips are generally equal proportions. The midsection (the waist) is the smaller measurement because it is the cinching in part of the hourglass.
If you build muscle running up and down your sides – which you’ll do by training your obliques too much – you destroy your curves and that hourglass shape.
When your obliques are well developed it gives you a straight up and down appearance in your midsection – you’ll look boxy rather than curvy. If you build up your obliques but still have fat on your stomach, it will make your love handles look even bigger.