There are over 500 different abs exercises out there, but only 2 that actually helped me build my six pack. Because to get welldefined abs, it’s not just about having low body fat. It also comes down to the ab workout and ab exercises you use to train them. Increasing the size of your abs can help them “poke through” more. But here’s the thing, most ab exercises you see online won’t help you actually build your six pack. So, in this video, I’ll share the secret to how to train abs — efficiently and effectively.

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Planks and butterfly kicks are both great corestrengthening exercises, but they’ll do next to nothing for actually growing your abs. All they’re doing is stabilizing your core like they would during a compound movement. See, the main function of your abs is to bring your rib cage and pelvis together by rounding the spine. And so, this brings us to one of the most common myths I hear: “When performing ab exercises, you’ve gotta keep your back straight.” But if your back stays flat and all you do is swing your legs up and down into an L shape, your abs will contract to stabilize, but really, it’s going to be your hip flexors that do all the work. And it’s not just leg raises. This is a common problem with most ab exercises, at least, with how they’re typically done. But the thing is, it’s actually pretty easy to build your abs once you stop letting your hip flexors do all the work.

And the nice part is, you can emphasize either your upper abs or lower abs more based on the type of exercise you do. So, to keep things simple, let me just share my 2 favorite ab exercises for both. Let’s start with the lower abs. A lot of new research suggests that muscle regions closest to the moving body part will grow the most. So, to target the lower abs, we just want an exercise where the bottom half of our body moves towards the top. Also, since muscles seem to grow best when challenged in their most “stretched” position, we’ll use reverse crunches.

Bend your knees in towards your body and think about raising your hips up and crunching your knees towards your chest, to actually round your spine. Think “C” shape instead of “L” shape. Go as far up as you can then slowly control the way down. For beginners, bring your knees closer to your chest and try to just lift your tailbone off the bench without swinging your legs. Once you get stronger, try to get higher and higher and then gradually straighten your legs out more to simulate the effect of adding weight to the movement. If you want to make it even more effective, you’ll want to increase stretch in your abs at the bottom. For that, I’d highly recommend getting an ab mat and placing that between your lower back and the bench.

Ok, now let’s focus on the upper abs for your six pack. Now we want an exercise where we’re now folding the upper body towards the lower body. The easiest way to hit the upper abs as a beginner is with crunches. But again, think about folding your chest down towards your pelvis into a C shape. Your spine should extend out to stretch your abs and then your abs should contract to fold your chest over your pelvis. Now, with crunches, just try to get your shoulder blades off the ground. Any higher than that and it’ll just be your hip flexors taking over. But if you want even better results from each rep, again, use an ab mat. You can also always use a stability ball, bosu ball, or at the very least a rolled up towel which as you can see still lengthens the abs a bit more.

But once that becomes too easy, I’d recommend moving onto a rope cable crunch. Pay attention to your hip flexors. If your hips are swinging back to your heels every rep, you’re just using momentum and your hip flexors to move the weight. Again, focus on the spine. Lock your hips at 90 degrees, lock your arms next to your ears, and then contract your upper abs as you try to fold your chest down onto your abs. Once you feel comfortable with it, you can make them even more effective by turning around and pulling the rope away from the cable. Once you get it right, you should feel that your abs are most challenged at the very beginning, in their most stretched position. (Exactly what we’re going for with our ab exercises.)

But when it comes to how to train the abs and get a six pack, here’s the key: train them like any other muscle. Hard with progressive overload, but also give them time to rest. I recommend doing 3 sets of each exercise for 612 reps. Once you can do 12 reps for all 3 sets, then bump up the difficulty or add a bit more weight. Start with training them once a week and if you're really serious, bump it up to twice a week.