Strong Ab Strategies: The Dos and Dont’s of Sculpted Abs

Do you want stronger, sculpted abs? If yes, read on. This post will teach you the dos and dont’s of ab building.

There’s a reason strong, sculpted abs are sought after. They symbolize health and fitness – they are proof that you’ve put in the work. Here are the dos and dont’s of ab sculpting so that you have a strong, science-backed strategy moving forward.

The Dos and Dont’s of Sculpted Abs

The good news is that you don’t have to spend hours in the gym. You can build stronger, sculpted abs with just 30-45 minutes, 3-4 days a week. Here’s how.

Don’t do endless crunches

1,000 crunches a day might help to build strength, but it won’t help you see sculpted abs. In truth, we all have abs. Abdominals are part of your core and every movement you make – from carrying groceries to making the bed – uses your core. So while it’s a good idea to target strengthen, endless crunches isn’t the most efficient way.

In order to see the abs you’re building, you need to lose belly fat. Unfortunately, you can’t spot reduce fat. The only way to lose fat from your belly is to lose fat from the entire body. So while you’re doing crunches (and planks, and leg raises, and oblique crunches), you also need to focus on reducing overall body fat.

Which means…

Do clean up your diet

You can’t out-workout a poor diet. That’s true with any goal but it’s especially true if your goal is to sculpt your abdominals. If you want sculpted abs, your diet goal should be to eat less energy than you burn, eat more often throughout the day and choose high quality foods.

Reducing overall body fat requires a caloric deficit. But that doesn’t mean you should drastically cut calories. Your body needs a baseline amount of energy to function. Without that fuel, your metabolism will slow down to reserve energy for the important stuff: thinking, digesting, recovering, keep organs running. You know, that kind of thing.

This is a great calculator for getting started with an appropriate caloric deficit. Once you’ve figured out how many calories you need in a day, quality is going to become important. Focus on eating high quality foods and reducing or even eliminating your intake of processed, sugary foods and drink.

Don’t train your abs every day

Your abs are a muscle group just like any other muscle group. While you do need to train them and challenge them to grow, they do require adequate recovery time too.

Muscle growth 101: to grow bigger and stronger (and leaner and toned), you have to force your existing muscle tissue to put in the work. They want to stay the same, you want change. So you go to the gym and you do the workout. The workout doesn’t build muscle…it breaks it down. You’ve triggered the first part of the process.

The second part of the process is where actual bodybuilding occurs. This is the one that, if you’re training abs daily, you’re completely ignoring! Part 2 of muscle growth is recovery. Give your muscles the fuel and the time to recover.

Repeat this process over and over again and you will see results.

Repeat this process over and over again and you will see results.

Julia Hale Fitness

Do add weights to your workout

Use added stimulus to introduce more of a challenge to your ab workout and you’ll fire up results. Not to repeat myself here but, your ab muscles are like any other muscle group in your body. They’re adaptable, but they don’t like change. So they won’t change, unless you introduce a new challenge.

If you only ever train your abs with bodyweight exercises, those muscles will eventually get used to that amount of stimulus and stop responding. *That doesn’t mean they stop working – it means that they’ll stop growing and getting stronger.* The solution: add resistance.

You’ll notice that as you add weight to your training routine, you won’t be able to complete as many reps as you complete with just bodyweight. That’s fine – great, in fact! Work with a weight that allows you to complete 8-12 reps for 3-5 sets. This is a great hypertrophy (muscle growth) rep range and will give you great results.

Don’t waste workout time

To build the burn without adding tons of time to your workout, keep your body moving. You can do this a few different ways.

1. Circuit training. Choose 3 or more exercises and do them one after the other so that instead of sitting around on your phone in between sets, you’re working. You can rest in between exercises but keep it to a minimum to maximize efficiency.
   
2. Cardio acceleration. This is a style of training in which instead of taking your rest periods as full rests, you fill that time with cardio. This is a high level training technique but anyone can do it – you just need to ease your way into it. Get started with it using this guide!

Do keep your body moving

If you want to see strong, sculpted abs, and you know that you need to reduce overall body fat to see them, it stands to follow that what you do in the gym to burn calories may not be enough. What you do during the other hours of your day counts. Big time.

N.E.A.T. is the acronym for non-exercise activity thermogenesis…which is trainer speak for all the stuff that you do that is not your workout. And it can really make a difference.

It takes more energy to stand than it does to sit. More energy to fidget than to sit still. So take the stairs. Park further away. Ride your bike to the store. Walk your dogs for 10 minutes longer. Do yardwork or house work or have a dance party. All of this is movement. It all burns calories to some degree and can help your sculpted ab efforts.

Don’t skip the big lifts

Muscle is your body’s number one fat burner. The more muscle you have, the more calories your body uses to maintain it even at rest. To build more muscle you need to strength train – and the big lifts are the MVPs of muscle building and calorie burning.

A single, heavier, total body strength training workout can boost your metabolic burn for up to 2 days. That’s because the heavier, more complex lifts that you train, the more muscle fiber you breakdown and the harder your body has to work to recover. So don’t neglect these big lifts:

• Weighted Squats
• Barbell Deadlifts
• Barbell Rows
• Chest Press
• Military Press
• Weighted Lunges
• Hip Thrusts

Do master the plank

The plank, and all of its endless variations, is an incredibly important skill. There is no exercise out there that is more effective, efficient or involved in almost every movement you make in life. Planks engage your abdominal muscles, obliques, glutes, shoulders, lats and arms. They’re great for core strength, stability and balance. And they can be endlessly challenging.

At first glance, planks are simple. Hold a pushup position, don’t move. But simple doesn’t mean easy. Planks, when done correctly, engage multiple muscle groups under 100% tension for the entire hold. Plus, you can always add to the difficulty level by adding time, weight, or movement (active planks, plank up downs, plank hip dips, etc).

Let’s get to work!