Don't Do These 5 Abs Exercises. Train Your Six-Pack This Way Instead. | The Don't List | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00From five-minute ab workouts to miracle ab exercises to crazy ab moves that you
00:04have never seen you probably not going to be able to do, sometimes even throwing
00:08barbells around so you can train your abs. I don't get it. Fitness social media
00:11is overloaded with dumb ab exercises that won't actually build the strong
00:16bulletproof core you actually need in a rational manner. Yes, your core serves a
00:20host of different functions and is capable of everything from twisting to
00:25bracing to flexing your spine. But how do we train it? By skipping Instagram
00:29stupidity and focusing on better moves. That's what we're gonna hit on today's
00:32Don't List. We're gonna start with a classic, the crunch. And these are a
00:36staple move you'd think but they're not actually challenging your abs or a big
00:39range of motion. They're not giving you much load or time and attention and
00:42they're really only working your abs in the flex position. That's why we want to
00:45ditch the crunch. Instead we want to focus on an exercise like the cable
00:49crunch. Now this is something you're gonna be able to load a lot more
00:52aggressively and it's gonna take you through a greater range of motion. And
00:55one of the biggest things we want to think about when we're training abs is
00:58something called anti-extension. We want load as we're getting back to that
01:01stretch position. That's what you're gonna get out of the cable crunch. You
01:04don't get a hint of that with the standard crunch. As much as we think
01:08planks are amazing when people can hold them for 5, 10, 15 minutes and land in
01:12record books, note this about the guys who are holding the planks. They do not
01:16have terrific six-packs, they do not have impressive core strength, and these
01:19aren't the people who are showcasing rotational power. The plank loses its
01:22value after 40 seconds or so. So what we want to do instead of wasting our time
01:26by doing planks is we want to get to dynamic planks. We want to find moves
01:30that are gonna challenge rotation, they're gonna challenge anti-extension.
01:33When we're in that plank position, we want to think of that as a starting
01:36point. So do moves like plank shoulder taps and long lever planks, which are
01:40really, really great for anti-extension. The plank isn't a bad starting point if
01:44you are a very, very beginner. But once you advance, once you start to understand
01:48that you can hold a plank and control that for 60 seconds, we want to move on
01:51to moves that are actually gonna build our core and that is not the world
01:54record plank. Yes, you'll see plenty of jack guys doing side bends on Instagram,
01:58but know that they're building their abs with the moves that they're not showing
02:02you on Instagram. Technically, side bends can work, but it's just not the best use
02:07of your time because it's really, really easy to go through that side bend motion
02:10just because of the placement of the load and let it be driven by something
02:13other than our core and that is not going to get us to the goals we
02:16actually want. Instead of doing side bends, we want to think about doing a
02:19move called the overhead powell press. Now this is going to produce really
02:23similar tension for our obliques and abs as exactly what we're gonna get or
02:28we think we're getting with the side bend, except it's a lot easier to stay
02:31focused and the placement of the load over our head is really gonna keep more
02:35tension on our abs for the entire life of the set. That's exactly what we want.
02:39We're gonna get a lot deeper of a contraction and we're gonna really feel
02:42what we're doing. Another option here is a single arm farmer's walk. That is a dynamic,
02:46think of that as a dynamic side bend. We're essentially contracting our abs
02:49and maintaining stability in one position while we have to move. That's
02:52very similar to what we were talking about with the dynamic plank and it's a
02:55lot better than a side bend. One of the most popular moves I see in all these
02:59five-minute ab workouts and all these five-minute workouts that people can do
03:02in their bedrooms and anywhere is something called the reverse crunch and
03:05people are gonna tell you that this is working your lower abs. Truth is,
03:09technically they're right, but this move is also really really easy to cheat on
03:13and to avoid creating proper core tension with and that's just not gonna
03:16get you what you need. You wind up doing this move too fast and you wind up not
03:20getting anything out of the reverse crunch. So what we want to do really, if
03:24we really want six-pack abs, we want to find a more challenging move that's
03:27still gonna let us attack our lower abs and it's gonna challenge us a little bit
03:30more in anti-extension. That exercise is any hanging leg lift variation. When we're
03:35in a hanging leg lift, the great thing here that happens is we have tension on
03:39our abs and we can maintain tension on our core when we are in the bottom of
03:43the exercise. That's where we're gonna get that really great anti-extension
03:45effect. You will immediately know this too for one simple reason. You're not
03:50gonna be able to do as many reps of hanging leg lifts as you can do reverse
03:53crunches. You can do reverse crunches all day, but if you learn the hanging leg
03:56lift, you're gonna get fewer reps and a lot more production out of things. Another
04:00way too popular move that we see in a lot of these five-minute ab workouts is
04:04something called the bicycle crunch and it sounds fancy, it looks fancy, but it is
04:08way too easy to cheat on the bicycle crunch and people move through it way
04:11too fast and there are too many moments in the bicycle crunch where there just
04:15isn't tension on our abs. Very often we don't maintain that hollow position when
04:19we're doing the bicycle crunch and if we don't maintain that then that's
04:22tension coming off of our core. We're just not getting as much out of this as
04:25we could. Instead, if we're looking for a move that creates some rotation and gets
04:29our legs moving individually while still challenging our abs, we want to grab
04:33kettlebells or even dumbbells and we want to go to something called a front
04:36rack march. If you do this for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, you're gonna get your heart
04:40rate up, you're going to be challenging your core from a balance standpoint and
04:43there's just a lot more going on. Even just holding the front rack is really
04:46underrated for your abs. So that's one really big move we can go to and if you
04:50want a real challenge from a rotational standpoint, then we're going to go to a
04:53half kneeling kettlebell windmill. Now we're getting tremendous rotation. We
04:57take our core through a great range of rotational movement and we get a whole
05:01ton of abs. So that is a lot better for your core than any of those five-minute
05:05ab moves. Get those moves off of your list and focus on the moves that we gave you.