There is a big misconception when it comes to abdominal training. You often hear that in order to trim your waistline you need to do countless high rep sets of crunches and you need to train your abs frequently throughout the week. This is simply not true. You can’t spot reduce fat around your waist no matter how many reps you do so forget about it.
To have great abs you need two things: one is good abdominal muscular development, and the second is a low-level of body fat. Neither of these results from frequent high-rep ab training.
For increasing abdominal muscular development you need to approach ab training as you do training for any other body part. If you want to increase development, you need to train the area with resistance. We recommend overloading the abs in an 8-12 rep range. A higher rep range is used compared to the normal Max-OT 4-6 reps so you can effectively overload the abs while maintaining good form and feel during every rep and maintain tension on the abs.
I usually choose cable crunches and weighted leg rises as my primary ab exercises. I perform 3 sets of cable crunches along with 3 sets of weighted leg raises. I think 6 total sets of direct overload for abs is plenty, especially when you consider the amount of work abs get all week-long stabilizing your body during heavy compound lifts.
As for frequency, direct ab training once every five days is optimum. Again, abs get a lot of work all week-long stabilizing your body so one time a week with direct overload will guard against overtraining and spur greater results.
After increasing abdominal muscular development by continually executing intelligent Max-OT training you need to focus on the other ingredient for great abs which is shedding body fat. This important ingredient is accomplished with attention to diet and intense Max-OT cardio.
If you are smart and consistent with your diet and cardio, you’ll melt away the fat and the abdominal muscles you’ve worked hard to develop will be visible. The end result will be an awesome set of rock hard abs.
