Five Things I Did That Helped Me Get Great Abs
These five things helped me go from having decent abs to having great abs
Everybody’s body is different and so responds differently to exercise and diet, meaning the path to getting great abs is a personal one. Some people have to eat loads of carbs, some people have to cut out loads of carbs. Some people have to train seven days a week, some people have to train only a few times a week.
But there are some things that apply to everyone. These are the five things that I believe best helped me to get great abs and that I believe can be utilised by everyone to help get great abs.
Deadlifts and squats
To get great abs one of the most important things you must do is strengthen your core. That means the best exercises to get great abs are ones that engage your core muscles to their fullest extent –that’s the best way to strengthen them.
If you do deadlifts and squats properly, there are no exercises out there that are better able to help you fully engage and thus strengthen your core. Meaning deadlifts and squats are not just key for getting a great ass, they are super important for getting great abs.
I know this because once I started doing lots of them my abs became turbocharged, and I went from having decent abs to having really good abs. So a great way to get great abs is to start doing lots of deadlifts and squats.
Note: For most people standard squats and deadlifts will suffice. But if you get more advanced a favourite of mine which I always feel helps to supercharge my abs, are deficit deadlifts:
Ten-minute abs blast at the end of every workout
When I first started working out I used to do a separate abs workout, but I soon realised that I found abs workouts boring. Because of this, I decided instead I would do a ten-minute abs blast at the end of every workout.
It turned out to be one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. Once I started doing this my abs improved many times over. Meaning a great way to get great abs is doing an abs blast workout at the end of every gym visit. Just ten minutes of intense abs work.
Note: my favourite ten-minute routine is as follows:
· Thirty wall situps
· one minute plank
· fifteen dumbbell side benders (each side)
· twenty seated leg tucks
· forty medicine ball seated twists
Supersets
Finding ways to incorporate core exercises into all of your workouts can be a great way of improving your abs. Not only will doing so mean you have less rest time, a great plus in itself as one of the biggest mistakes many people make is they spend far too much time in the gym waiting between sets, it will also keep your heart rate up and thus improve your calorie burn. So it’s a win-win, burn up more calories and strengthen your core.
A great way of doing this is utilising supersets. This is where you do two different exercises in quick succession. For example, one of my favourite supersets is doing bent-over rows with situps. So I do a set of bent-over rows immediately followed by a set of situps. I normally do this four times. Another of my favourites is mixing squats with side benders, while another is mixing deadlifts with situps.
There are many variations you can do; it just comes down to personal preference. Whichever you choose utilising supersets as a means of introducing core exercises into all of your workouts can be a great way of turbocharging your abs.
Studying diet
One of the biggest mistakes a person who wants great abs can make is not understanding that the gym is only half of the battle. Don’t get me wrong, for a lucky few the gym is the only battle because they can eat whatever they want and not put on a pound of fat.
For everyone else though if you don’t get diet right, you are not getting great abs. I know people who spend hours a day exercising, and yet still don’t have even a hint of abs. I know people who are highly skilled in exercise, have crazy levels of fitness and strength, and yet don’t have even a hint of abs. And the reason in both cases is they have awful diets.
Understanding the importance of diet when it comes to getting great abs is one of the most important things a person who wants great abs can do. Because the fact of the matter is if you are not willing to learn what food you need to eat for your body to have great abs, you will never have great abs.
I know this because in the beginning I did not pay much attention to diet, and even though I have what you would call good ab genetics, I only got good abs once I started paying proper attention to diet.
Note: the word diet is frequently misunderstood, people assume it means cutting foods out or eating vegetables and things like that. It does not. Diet simply means what you eat. When it comes to getting great abs, what you must learn is how much you need to eat and what you need to eat.
So it is not about cutting out food or adding food. It’s about understanding how food affects your body and working out which foods you need and how much of those foods you need to get the body you want.
Learning the power of engaging the core
A great way to both get great abs and to lower the chances of injury through training, is learning how to properly engage your core during exercise. I don’t know who said this but something that has always stuck with me is the following statement: if you properly engage your core, every workout becomes an ab workout.
The reason it is such great advice is because it’s true. Literally, every exercise you do requires you to engage your core. Bicep curls. Your core needs to be engaged. Bench press. Your core needs to be engaged. Bent over rows. Your core needs to be engaged. Squats. The same. Deadlifts. The same. And on and on I could go.
Every exercise you do you need to engage your core, and if you learn to do this properly and focus on doing this properly, not only will you lessen your chances of being injured, but you will also greatly strengthen your core and thus improve your chances of getting great abs.
I know this because learning this helped me to not only massively turbocharge my ab game but also my training game. Literally, once I started focusing on keeping a strong core, my technique when it came to exercise vastly improved, and it was amazing how once that happened all the aches and pains I used to get the day after a workout went away.
Final words
Find the exercises that work best for you and the foods that work best for you, and you will find the path to getting great abs. Hopefully, this post has provided you with some ideas for finding your path.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading!
If you like this post you may also enjoy the following:
The Three Key Factors You Need To Understand To Get Great Abs
The Most Important Person You Need to Listen to If You Want Great Abs
Ten Simple Ways to Lose Weight and Keep It Off
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