Abs/Core Workouts 101:
Designing An Abs/Core Workout

Instead of experiencing a constant decline in your physical fitness levels and overall health, strengthen your core, get flat abs, and feel great. Prioritizing your abs (and low back) will lead you towards better health.

But it's important you go about training them the right way.

Functionally speaking, your core helps you catch your balance and stabilize. This means every time you take a step, your core helps you avoid falling over. And every time you lift a heavy weight, or extend your arms/legs out in front or behind you, it's your core stabilizing you and preventing you from tipping over.

So, we train your core with bodyweight exercises, occasional use of heavy weights, unstable surfaces, and multiple speeds of movement. The more we mix it up, causing your body to react, stabilize, and re-center, the better we are training your core for the real world.

In terms of frequency, it's important to train your core at least 5 days/week when you want to progress quickly.

However, there are a few exceptions to this:

To help you understand 'periodization', here's a practical
example as it relates to abs training:

After 18 weeks, simply repeat or mix it up and work on another goal.

You'll notice I've chosen bodyweight abs/core workouts for the first and last phase, as these are 'maintenance' phases, and our goal is to improve mobility and endurance, rather than power and strength. This brings up an important topic about intensity:

Your goal should be to hit 8-9 out of 10 intensity on every high interval of every set; every low interval is meant for active rest, so it's a 2-3 out of 10 intensity, if that. Often times, you'll use your low intervals simply to change to a new exercise, prep yourself, and get started.

For the most part, it's a good idea to stack 10 different exercises together into a circuit, on one minute intervals. This way, you can choose 50/10, 40/20, 30/30, 20/40, or 10/50 for your high/low intervals, respectively, and mix it up over time.

You'll want to sequence the exercises in a particular order, so you can make sure to rest one group of muscles while working another and so on. Here's an example workout, to make things more clear:

The main reasons I choose the workout format above for abs training are:

Many of the exercises chosen in the workout above are full-body exercises; and, you might also notice typical abs crunches, sit-ups, leg throws, and other dangerous abs exercises are not listed. These exercises can result in injury to your neck, low back, or elsewhere and they are not recommended.

You see, a typical crunch, sit-up, or leg throw ends up placing almost all the strain through your neck and hip flexors, instead of your abs and core. When you do this, you actually weaken the strength of the nerve signal leading to your core, and you make it next to impossible to recruit your actual core muscles.

Besides, those exercises are training the wrong muscles, the wrong way. For clarity, you have 'bracing' abs muscles and 'stabilizing' abs muscles. The latter are part of your core. Let's take a closer look at which exercises concentrate on which type of abs muscle:

Yet, sometimes you choose the right exercises and your body might choose the wrong muscles. This can be because of old habits, or because your nervous system isn't well organized for movement. The solution, regardless, is to create new muscle memory.

Here's how I recommend you go about creating new muscle memory:

At first, you'll want to correct every little mistake you make. Over time, you'll want to think about how you performed at the end of every set; eventually, at the end of every workout. By fading your feedback over time, you'll learn more quickly.

Last but not least, we need to discuss food. Most people get this all wrong -- the rule is simple -- eat food that is good for you.

The #1 mistake most people make with their diet is allowing small amounts of "abs-poison" to seep in. For example, you might have a few bites of ice cream every couple of days, eat some deep fried food from time to time, or have "only" a soda or two per day.

If it's not a whole food and/or you don't feel at least as energetic after eating as you did when you sat down, it's not actually "food" for your body. This is one of the most important lessons I can teach you.

Now, "good" for you can be confusing, so let's go back to basics:

• Eat whole foods (fruits, vegetables, grass fed and organic meats, eggs, grass fed butter, first cold-press olive oil, coconut oil, and some grains, like rice). Avoid eating even small amounts of other foods, as they cause inflammation and often ruin nutrient absorption.
• Test out each whole food, one by one, and see how you feel immediately after you eat it, and then an hour or two later. Keep the foods that make you feel great; eliminate any food that makes you feel less energetic than before you ate it.

When you simplify nutrition to 'eating whole foods' and 'feeling-based eating', you are adapting your diet in a very natural way, and your abs will naturally want to pop out.

The easiest and fastest way to a flat stomach is cleaning up your diet.

A flat stomach helps you recruit your core, and your core helps your flat stomach look and feel so much better. Eat well; redefine food's purpose to nourish your body and fuel it for your day.

Remember, your core supports your CNS, which is the communication center to the rest of your body. Abs are made in the kitchen and through intensity. By spending 10 minutes training your core with dynamic and unstable exercises, you'll be able to achieve a balance reaction and stimulate your metabolism at the same time. Learn to alternate the emphasis on different body parts with each exercise -- but still include as many joints as possible -- and see your results accelerate. Finally, reprogram your body to recruit your core, and avoid using bracing muscles in its place.

As you can see, there's a lot that goes into designing an abs training program. And, as you might have guessed, I'm interested in helping you get great results. Instead of being focused on choosing the perfect exercises, intensities, reps, rest periods, intervals, and equipment, I'd rather you focus on scheduling your workouts, keeping track of your results, and measuring your progress over time.

Besides, if you get even half the results of our other clients, you won't be sorry. Go ahead and click the add 'activate my membership' button below: (*results may vary)