When working out your core and abdominal muscles, there are a few questions people have about structuring their ab routine that could make the difference between successful chest & stomach toning and failure with these exercises.  The following list is a set of question & answers that are essential to know for your abdominal training.

Question 1:  Is there a way you can build the upper and lower abs independently of each other?ab routine

Answer 1:  Although you may try to isolate the workouts between the upper and lower ab muscles, in actuality, you cannot contract one muscle without affecting the other.   Studies have shown that the reason why you feel a tighter contraction with the upper abdominal muscles, while doing crunches, is because it is much shorter and the entire part of the muscle is activated.  Your entire abdominal region is involved with the movement.

However, in your ab routine you can include a variety of exercises that strengthen a particular section of your abdominal muscles much better.  For example, if you want to develop your lower rectus abdominal muscles you can perform reverse crunches that focus the contraction on these muscles.  There are also abdominal exercises that work primarily on the side oblique muscles.

Question 2:  What is the best abdominal exercise?

Answer 2:   Although there is no one exercise that works all of your ab muscles in the best way, research has shown that the bicycle crunch exercise and the roman chair exercise are the best for strengthening the core and abdominal muscles.  Now, the roman chair is a stationary piece of equipment that works well to develop the internal and external obliques.  There are a long list of other ab machines that do a similar job in strengthening the stomach muscles.  For instance, the ab circle pro has been considered by experts to be a great way to tone the rectus abdominis and side oblique muscles.

Question 3:  Does the sequence of exercises matter in your ab routine workout?

Answer3:  Although there is written material that states that the sequence of exercises in your ab routine is an important factor, there is no proof of this being true.  However, there is proof that if you continue to do the same exercise routine every day, that the body adapts to the routine and it hits a plateau in its development.  Fitness experts encourage you to change your ab routine every 1 to 3 months.

Tags: ab routine, abdominal training, upper and lower abs, abdominal muscle, reverse crunches, obliques, bicycle crunch, roman chair, ab machines, ab circle pro, rectus abdominis

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