Q. I’ve been doing 200 crunches every day for my abs, but I still can’t see them properly. And my lower abs don’t show at all. What’s the best exercise for the abs (lower abs too)?
A. Would you train your chest, arms, or shoulders every day? Then why do the same with your abs? To develop chiselled abs, they need to be trained no more than once every two days. Your abs need rest and recovery, just like every other muscle group. Doing millions of crunches will develop flat-looking abs with a lot of endurance. For the chiselled look, you need some kind of abdominal exercise that provides resistance (such as sit-ups on an incline board, or weighted crunches).
The myth that you can train your upper abs using sit-ups, and your lower abs with leg raises, simply isn’t true. While these exercises may emphasise one area of your abdominals, your lower and upper abs (as they are often mistakenly called) are all one muscle. For most people, the lower and upper abs can’t be isolated from each other.
The most important thing to remember is that abs aren’t made in the gym, they’re made in the kitchen. To see your six-pack, you need to be lean. A good diet containing enough high-quality protein (such as chicken, beef, fish, or a good whey protein like Promax by Maximuscle), moderate amounts of unrefined carbohydrate, and plenty of healthy fats (found in salmon, mackerel, or flax oil) is the best way to strip away the fat and reveal your abdominal muscles.
Read Simple tips to shed fat and get lean for more information about what and when to eat for fat loss.
