Hey ya’ll! (awkward…sorry for the accent, we’re watching Chopped Southern Style) Anywayyyys, so you want to get some abs in? Who doesn’t! They’re fun, quick, and it’s an enjoyable burn. It’s also fun to work on your mid-section, which bother most people weight or fat-wise. When you do an ab workout (or core–even better), you’re building the muscle there. It’s not necessarily targeting just belly fat, but you will burn calories as you do these workouts, and as discussed earlier, will continue to burn calories afterwards. You’ll start off with some wash-board abs, then move onto certain “packs.” It just matters how hard you work.
So we’ve put together for you an easy routine that can be swapped around. It consists of 3 exercises–you get to choose from the list below. In this fast workout, we want to work all parts of your abdomen including upper abs, lower abs, and obliques. Yes, those aren’t the scientific names, but it’s how we all know them by. So choose one from each category and put them together. We want to do 30 reps of each and 3 sets of all of it.
Upper Abs
Lowers Abs
- Plank
- Fast bicycles
- Slow bicycles (my favorite, just take the pace down slower and you will feel it much more strongly)
- Pikes
- Reverse crunches
Obliques
- Side crunches (my favorite)
- Russian twists
- Side touches
- Ankle touches
- Broom twists
Again, this is a home workout. If you had a facility like a gym, you could obviously incorporate more exercises, using cables, more weights, bars, medicine ball, roman chair, etc.
Remember, you’re doing 30 reps (which means number of times you perform an exercise) of each exercise out of the three categories for 3 sets. Let me show you an example:
Example Mix ‘n Match Abs Workout
FIRST SET
- 30 indian crunches
- 30 slow bicycles
- 30 side crunches
SECOND SET
- 30 indian crunches
- 30 slow bicycles
- 30 side crunches
THIRD SET
- 30 indian crunches
- 30 slow bicycles
- 30 side crunches
And that’s 270 reps of abs exercises. So you get the idea. And if you don’t want to just do the same ones, add in some more for your different sets. Also, I normally do ten sets, but three is a great place to start out.
Let me know how this works for you and what abs exercises you love!
Get crazy, Sparta style
