The gym provides a lot of opportunities for a full-fledged abs workout. To work it out from different angles, a variety of equipment has been created, including block and lever simulators, which allow you to reduce or increase the load in each approach. This is the fundamental difference between training in the gym and training with your own weight. You can change the working weight in abdominal exercises as you like, thereby varying the intensity.
The abs workout program in the gym can be extremely varied, but the basic principles are always the same:
- Exercise should not be too much.
- They should not be too heavy or too light.
- Even the most effective exercises will not rid you of excess belly fat.
- It is important to fully recover between workouts.
Remember these four main points: they will make your life much easier when building your training process.
Gym abs workout tips
In this article, we will figure out how often you need to work out the abs in the gym and which training program to follow. Let's start with a few tips to help you organize your training properly.
Training frequency
The optimal training frequency is the most important condition for performance. Abs is a relatively small muscle group, and overtraining is as easy as shelling pears. Allow adequate time for rest and recovery. One, maximum two full workouts per week will be sufficient.
Another option is also allowed - do 1-2 abdominal exercises at the beginning of the workout as a warm-up or at the end as a cool-down. A huge number of nerve endings pass through the rectus abdominis muscle. Due to the impact on them, the body will warm up faster and will be ready for intense stress. When training in this mode, the main thing is not to overdo it. Never work to failure. Remember that in a day or two you have another strength training and you will start it again with a press exercise.
Another option is to do one set on the press in between sets for other muscle groups. Thus, you can do a couple of exercises on the rectus abdominis muscle for 3-4 sets.
Volume and number of repetitions
For beginners, from the abundance of all kinds of abs simulators in the gym, their eyes run wild. I would like to work for everyone. But you shouldn't. Choose no more than five exercises that work best for you, and perform them in one variation or another for each workout (you do not need to do everything at once, do 2-3 in one workout and alternate with the rest). If you feel that the exercise has become too easy, change it to another to force the muscles to work at a different angle, or increase the load. Then progress will not be long in coming.
The repetition aspect of ab training is stubbornly ignored by almost all beginners. They do not understand that abs are the same muscle as everyone else. It cannot fully contract and stretch 50-100 times in a row. If you train your abs in this rep range, you train anything but him.
The optimal number of repetitions for the press is about 15... If you do everything right, then after the fifteenth repetition, you will achieve failure and you will feel a strong burning sensation in the abdominal area.
Oblique muscle training
Don't overdo it with your obliques. In every gym, you will see girls or young men doing side bends with dumbbells or lower pulleys every workout. In most cases, they have a wide waist with hypertrophied oblique abdominal muscles. It doesn't look aesthetically pleasing at all.
It is necessary to train the oblique abdominal muscles, but strictly dosed. Remember that they experience a lot of static stress during squats or deadlifts. One exercise once a week will be enough.
Bleeding the lower press
Don't trust that any particular exercise will magically pump up your lower abs. There are no isolated exercises for this muscle area. You can argue and say: but what about lifting the legs in the hang - does it not work out the lower section of the press? No. Such an angle only displaces the load on it. It turns out that the lower section of the press does, for example, 70% of the work, and the upper one - 30%.
The bottom two "cubes" are solely a matter of the thickness of the subcutaneous fat layer, and there is no secret exercise from which they immediately appear. To dry out to such a state, two months will be enough for someone, and half a year for someone. It all depends on the characteristics of your body.
Diversity
Training should be varied. The body quickly adapts to repetitive work, so variability is the key to athletic performance. Don't dwell on the same thing. Change the set of exercises, their order, the weight of additional weights, the number of sets and reps, the rest time between sets, work on the principle of "rest-pause", do slow negative reps, supersets and drop sets, etc. There are many ways to do training more productive. Use all of these techniques for optimal results.
Do not blindly copy abdominal training programs from professional athletes or from articles on the Internet and magazines. Professionals have unlimited resources for recovery, which are not available to the average amateur.
Do only those exercises in which you can feel well the contraction and stretch of the trained muscle group. Nobody but yourself will make the most effective training program. But learning to feel your body takes time and experience.
© Srdjan - stock.adobe.com
Schedule and time of classes
It is necessary to correctly determine on what day you should train the abs. For example, if you do a full abs workout on Thursday, and a hard leg workout is scheduled for Friday, nothing will come of it. After properly training the press, you will feel such a soreness that you will have to forget about the base in the next couple of days. It is best to take a day of complete rest from sports, or put on a lighter workout the next day, in which you will not use your abs too much, for example, training your pectoral muscles.
There is a myth among bodybuilders that the abs should be trained in the morning on an empty stomach. It is believed to reduce the waist and improve relief. Thus, the press was trained by the legendary bodybuilder Sergio Oliva, three-time winner of the "Mr. Olympia" tournament. He started every morning with a thousand crunches and only then went to breakfast. Looking at his abs, you can decide that this approach is the only correct one.
However, athletes of this level are unique with phenomenal genetics, so you should not adhere to their training and nutrition principles. They are unlikely to work for you. The effectiveness of the approach of training the press on an empty stomach has not been proven. All the benefits of it are fiction.
Training program in the gym for girls
Girls are advised to adhere to the scheme indicated at the beginning of the article - to combine the main workout with a light workout for the press. It turns out that there will be three light ab workouts per week. To put them at the beginning or at the end of the lesson - decide for yourself, focusing on your well-being.
| Workout number 1 | ||
| Twisting on the bench | 3x12-15 |  |
| Raising the knees to the elbows while hanging | 3x10 |  |
| Workout number 2 | ||
| Twisting in the simulator | 3x12-15 |  |
| Side bar | 20-40 seconds for each side |  |
| Workout number 3 | ||
| Running in a lying position | 30-60 seconds |  © logo3in1 - stock.adobe.com |
| Elbow plank | 30-60 seconds |  © Makatserchyk - stock.adobe.com |
Training program in the gym for men
Men should train their abs in a more forceful manner. One hard and voluminous workout will be enough for progress. Work your abs after working out your back, arms, chest, or shoulders. After training your legs, you simply do not have enough strength for this.
| Crunches on the press on the floor with additional weight | 4x10 |  © fizkes - stock.adobe.com |
| Hanging leg raises | 3x12-15 |  |
| Twisting in the simulator | 3x12-15 | |
| Running in a lying position | 30-60 seconds | © logo3in1 - stock.adobe.com |
| Plank with extra weight | 30-60 seconds |  |
Another option is shown in the photo:
© artinspiring - stock.adobe.com
Here the planks on outstretched arms and elbows in the first exercise are performed for 60 seconds, the lateral ones in the third - for 30 seconds. The rest of the exercises should be done in 2-3 sets of 12-15 repetitions.
If this approach is not to your liking, go for a crossfit workout. Typically, the CrossFit gym's abs workout program is designed so that your abdominal muscles are challenged almost every workout. Every more or less experienced CrossFit athlete boasts a raised abs. The main question is - can you fully recover by training with such a system?
We also recommend looking at the home abs workout program.
