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All About Abs 4 - Cardio and Tips

This is the final post in our four part series called All About Abs. The full series is PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 and PART 4.

In this post I will be going over a few essential cardio tips that you need to know when working on your abs as well as talking about a few lesser known tips and tricks.

Cardio for the Abs

If you have been following this series then you will know that weight loss is a vital step in abdominal development. Our abdominal muscles are covered with a layer of fat that prevents the muscles from showing through. If we want to have a sexy toned midsection then we need to lose a lot of this fat. To do that involves a clean healthy diet, abs exercises and some good fat burning cardio.

Before breakfast only?
The main aim of cardio as far as I’m concerned is to boost one’s metabolism so that you become a fat burning machine. Early on in my weight loss career I would only do cardio before breakfast because I knew that as soon as I had something to eat I would be burning sugar calories and not fat stores. While this is true to some extent it is important not to get caught up on it.

You see, when you go for a run after a meal you do not burn only calories and available energy. The body burns a mixture of fat and food. Furthermore, when you run after a meal you are burning energy that would otherwise be converted and stored as fat. You are also boosting your metabolism and heart rate such that once you have finished working out you still continue to burn calories. It is for these reasons that you shouldn’t be too caught up with only doing cardio before breakfast.

Getting intense!
If the point of cardio is to increase your metabolism and get your burning calories all day long then the best way to do that is with high intensity cardio.

Sprinting and other similar exercises raise your heart rate much beyond the regular slow jog and causes many chemicals to be released which also assist in burning fat. You can accomplish much more in a short space of time than you can with a regular low intensity workout.

So how should I do cardio for better abs?

Keep your cardio simple. If you are trying to lose weight so that your abs show through you should do three or for session a week of some nice high intensity sprinting. Each session should last for not much longer than 20 minutes and should be followed by a nice warm down.

However, one has to keep in mind that nothing in fitness is a hard and fast rule. I do my three set cardio workouts per week but I also lift weights four times a week, play indoor soccer twice a week, train martial arts at home and walk the dog twice a day. I am always out doing something active. Just because high intensity cardio is better for burning fat it does not mean you should stop your daily jog or your weekly sporting match. Everything you do will help.

Tips for better women’s abs

I wanted to take a look at some little tips and hints to finish off our series All About Abs. When one starts training the abs it is easy to get stuck in a rut doing the same thing day in and day out. While I am a big believer that one should stick to a routine if it works, I also think changing it up and keeping your workout fresh and exciting it important.

Here are some of my favorite tips for the abs:

a) Go as slow as possible
Abs exercises are the most frequently abused and misused. When I watch people in the gym doing their abs workout I sometimes can’t help but stare. They pump out the reps like it is a race. Not good.

Each repetition should be slow, controlled and strong. You can tell yourself that only the strong do their abs reps slowly. The proof of this is the wobble that starts to happen when you slow things down. This is a sign your abs aren’t as strong as they could be.

The decline part of the exercise is particularly important. Sometimes I jazz up my workout by doing the crunch quickly but I always do a nice slow decline to a count of about 5 seconds.

b) Add weight for faster abs growth
As I mentioned before, you should start to add weight to your chest when you do your crunches and sit ups. Adding weight increases the amount of work the abs have to to and forces them to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger. I have noticed that the women with the flattest abs are those who workout hard with exercises like gymnastics, boxing, martial arts and other gym exercises that require a lot of strength. Don’t allow yourself to stay on the same level for months at a time.

One of the best ways, I have found, to add some weight and resistance to your crunches is to get a partner to throw a medicine ball at you. As you sit up you toss the ball to them and then as you are about to decline they throw it to you. Catch it, delcine and then as you sit up throw it back again. This is a really big shock for the abs and really serves to boost you beyond any stubborn plateau that you might be on.

c) Protein shake immediately after the workout
Whenever you do a physical workout (especially with weights) you create tiny little tears in your muscles. The body then goes about repairing these tears and the result is muscle growth.

When you are trying to develop a muscle you need to get protein into the area as quickly as possible. Scientific research has shown that having a liquid source of protein straight after a workout can increase your results by 40%. That is a big number! Have a protein shake as soon as you finish your workout and you will find results come a lot quicker.

d) More rest
My best abs growth came when I stopped working them out so much and let them rest. I was doing an abs workout three times a week but over a busy period I cut it back to once and they have never grown quicker.

Muscles don’t grow when you are working them out. They grow afterwards when they are repairing. If your goal is to add some muscle to your abdominal area so that they are visible and firm then it is counter-productive to work them out again while they are still growing!

If you have been working on your abs for a while now and haven’t seen any real change then try reducing the amount you are doing. Most people will tell you to increase the amount you are doing but a lot of women I know are over killing it. Have some more rest, get your diet sorted out and see what happens.

e) Tense them during the day
Many people think that the main crux of the abdominal exercise happens as a result of the actual movement of the exercise. For example, the think that it is the action of curling your legs up in a reverse crunch that works the abs. This is a little misleading, however, as a lot of the work comes from you tensing your abs, not the movement.

If you tense your abs during the day you will become more expert at tensing them and as such will be able to get a deeper contraction when you hit the gym to work them out. If you keep your abs tensed throughout the entire movement of the abs exercise you will have much better results than if you only tensed them at the “crunch”.

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Conclusion
This is the final post in the series. We have looked at the basics, the exercises, the diet and finally the cardio and some tips. Abdominal training really isn’t as complex as people make it out to be. I encourage you to relax and take your time - enjoy your workouts and healthy eating. I also encourage you to study more and arm yourself with the best current knowledge and information. This is how the best abs are made.

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