Abdominal Exercises – The 3 Main Factors

As you go about the quest to get six pack abs, it’s vital that you take a look at all the different abdominal exercises that you could be performing throughout your program.

While ab exercises won’t be the main factor that determines whether you get a six pack – your body fat will, if you can make sure that you are performing the correct exercises as well, you will strengthen the core and make the muscles that much more visible once you do get down to those low body fat levels that are necessary.

Whenever you consider adding some abdominal exercises into your program though, there are a few vital things that need to be in place.

By always asking yourself if the abdominal exercises you’re considering have these, you can be sure that you’re including nothing but the top notch exercises that will get you the results you’re looking for.

Let’s have a look at the main factors that your abdominal exercises must contain.

Instability

The very first thing that you want any abdominal exercise that you perform to have is an element of instability. The more unstable you can make the body as you go about the exercise, the more every single muscle fiber in that core is going to have to contract in order to maintain your balance.
This is one reason why exercise balls are so hot right now with ab training. They will cause you to becoming very unbalanced and as such, your abs are going to have to work that much harder as you go about the movement.
Be sure that any of the abdominal exercises you’re considering have this incorporated in somehow.

Full Muscle Recruitment

Second, another important factor to look at is muscle recruitment. Ideally you want the abdominal exercises in your workout to really recruit all the major muscles in the abdominal region. If you find that it only recruits a small portion of the abs (such as a half sit-up would), then you won’t really be getting many results for your effort.
In addition to this, you also want to check how easy it is to recruit other muscles as well to help execute the exercise. For instance, some people will use their hip flexor muscles to allow them to come up through the full crunch.
Or, they may use their arms to push down on the floor as they do lying leg raises. By eliminating the chance that you do use alternate muscles to help you perform the exercise you boost the chances that you see full ab muscle development.

Added Resistance

Third, another very helpful thing that you’ll want in place for your abdominal exercises is resistance. Doing weighted decline sit-ups for example is an excellent way to really boost your core strength and build up that muscle tissue so that you can see very clear ab definition.
Likewise, if you can do cable crunches rather than plain crunches where you’re crunching against a weight, this will be much more effective.
Whenever you can find a way to boost the resistance utilized in the exercise you’re doing, make sure to take advantage of that.
So there you have the main factors to consider with any of the abdominal exercises you come across. If they have at least one of these elements then you can feel confident about adding them to your six pack abs workout routine.