Abs workout tips?

Mary, there are people out there who would love to reach out to you privately, too 🙂

To make that happen, you’ll need to clear out your inbox whenever you can find a spare moment between tending to the garden 😉

Women often miss the basic training theory...

They crush heavy sets of crunches and expect a miracle.
Expect what exactly?
That they'll melt belly fat and end up with a tight, snatched waist?

Nope. Not through crunches, anyway.
Crunches actually WIDEN your waist.

Look, here's the deal...
Training any muscle eventually increases its volume. That goes for abs too. If you bulk up those abdominal muscles, you’re going to have a wider midsection.

A tiny waist comes from dropping body fat.
And that happens exclusively through cardio.
(Yeah, back to that old rule about needing at least 45 minutes of steady movement before your body starts burning fat instead of glycogen/carbs)

If you don't have fat covering your core, you can get firm, visible abs with just about 20 focused sets of "crunches" per week. Anything over 15 reps per set is basically useless.

...you're hitting the nail on the head! 😉 I’ve seen it for myself, but man, it takes a minute to actually see the pattern playing out in real life.
Betty Rivera14, hold your horses, I finally cleared things out—I was being incredibly lazy, sorry 👋

So say someone starts with zero core strength, grinds out workouts for a long time, and finally gets those abs popping. Then they just stop... completely. What happens after a few months? Do the muscles just go soft while keeping that pumped volume? If so, that basically means all that work was a waste unless you're doing it for life... 😢

If you stop staying in shape and quit training, your muscles lose both size and tone.

slyrider16 said:Let's say someone with really weak abs trains hard for a while and finally gets those defined lines. Then they just stop working out entirely. What happens after a few months? Do the muscles soften up and lose tension but somehow keep that pumped volume? If that were true, it would mean all muscle training is basically pointless unless you do it for your entire life.😢

So what, you think you can grind for two months and then expect to still have a six-pack when you're fifty? Give me a break. That’s like expecting you to retain every single thing in your brain at age fifty that you happen to know today.

So you want to work out for just two months and expect to have a six-pack by age 50?

😁 This is actually what I’m looking for 😁

Anyway, what does someone do if they’ve never worked out before—zero muscle mass—but needs to drop a few pounds from the gut? I need a routine starting now that’s actually sustainable, considering I’ve basically done nothing my whole life...

George Bailey2? Any ideas? Should I go find a trainer?

I've been doing some solo workouts at home

As for my abs, I'm doing about ten reps for the middle and then ten on each side every single morning. To be fair, I only just started this three weeks ago, but hey, better late than never, right?

My main exercise is basically just walking to work and back home🙏—that's pretty much my entire fitness routine, I guess.
I just don't seem to have time for anything else in my schedule.

And honestly, we're having quite a bit of marathon sex lately, so I'm figuring that probably helps build up a little cardio too!

So, I’ve been hitting the gym about three times a week for the last month or so. For the first ten weeks or so, I was just doing full-body routines to get my stamina up, throwing in some standard crunches and reverse crunches on one of those huge stability balls. Honestly, those are killer exercises because you're engaging way more muscles and working on control compared to just lying on the floor. That ball is a total game changer.

I’ve moved on to more targeted workouts now, splitting things up between upper and lower body. Right now, I'm focusing on reverse crunches on the ball and 45° hyperextensions using a 5lb dumbbell. Man, I can really feel my lower back muscles working during that extension move.

Basically, I'm running 4 sets of 8-10 reps, except for my warm-up stuff which is more like 12 + 15 + 12. I try to keep a steady 4 - 0 - 2 tempo.

I have a few pointers regarding core training. For what it's worth, I’ve been hitting the local Gold's Gym for years.
I've experimented with various abdominal techniques over the years. Personally, I find the decline bench ineffective; because of my height, it tends to put far too much strain on my lower back.
Interestingly, my most significant progress in muscle definition came from working out on a simple floor mat. A buddy at the gym suggested it, and frankly, I thought he was talking nonsense at first—just some useless advice. But once I actually tried it at home, I realized exactly what he meant.
The trick is this: lie flat on your back on the floor, lift your legs into the air at a right angle, and move your torso toward your feet. Here is the catch: don't be like 80% of the people out there who just thrash around and slam themselves against the floor. Instead, rise slowly—keep your hands on your chest, for instance—and when you reach full contraction, hold that tension for five seconds. That is the secret, believe me. If you try this at home, you'll find you can barely squeeze out ten reps.
At the time, I was crushing 20 reps on the decline bench while holding an extra 15 lbs. Yet, when I switched to this method, I couldn't even manage eight.
To reiterate the process: inhale, engage your core, and once you hit peak contraction, attempt to hold that squeeze for five seconds. During that hold, you can exhale slowly or even grunt if it helps.😁 Then, lower yourself back down slowly.

That is just one specific exercise, and there are plenty more, but the principle remains identical: hold the contraction for a few seconds rather than flailing up and down like a maniac. It isn't about the number of repetitions. I'm telling you, after three sets of this, you won't be able to get up again. Try it yourself and see.

That is the ultimate technique for building abdominal volume—getting those defined "six-pack" blocks. Of course, this assumes you aren't carrying too much body fat, because those muscles won't show through a layer of fat. Just to be clear: this isn't a weight-loss strategy; it’s for aesthetics. If you want to lean out, stick to cycling and running. Run, run, run.👍