The PERFECT Abs Workout (Sets and Reps Included)

What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com. Today we continue our series of

perfect

exercises. This time, with one of the most requested: The Perfect Ab Workout. Guys, you have to realize that we are not just talking about the rectus abdominis when we talk about an abdominal

workout

. Many times people use the entire term "abs" to mean much more than that. Namely, the obliques, the transversus abdominis, maybe even the serratus because all of these muscles are important and they will all be

included

and worked on in our training here. But how are we to dictate what is so

perfect

?

Guys, you know I've said it before; There is no single, perfect

workout

. But we have to include some features to make it really good. When it comes to abs, it's not so much about the exercises, because we know that we have literally hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to choose from different exercises. It's more about making sure we hit the primary function and making sure we hit the primary sequence of how we want to train these muscles. I'll start with the sequence. When training your abs, because bottom-up movements tend to be heavier and more difficult because the weight of your legs will always be harder than lifting your torso, you should start with those where you have the most energy.

You'll find that if you save your bottom-up moves towards the end, you won't get as much out of them. So, we work on this particular sequence that will span across both variations of this workout. That's how it is. I said 'both' because I'm going to include a beginner version and a more advanced version of these workouts because I know there are people of different levels who want to follow this. In fact, to make it really easy I'm going to include using just a band and a pull-up bar. So even if you do this at home, you won't find it difficult to follow.

Guys, when we talk about function, abs do a lot of different things. They don't just do this. That's what many people think they do. They think they just creak. In fact, they control movement in the opposite direction. They will push you back and control that. We want to make sure we do that function if we're going to have a full workout. They also control movement in other directions. They prevent us from lateral movement if it is unnecessary or unwanted. And we can work on exercises that can do that too. They will also prevent rotation. We can stay here in the middle and have someone push our arms to the left or right and they don't go anywhere, and the main function there is attributed to the abdominals and obliques.

We also know they can control rotation. They can let it happen, but it will happen under your control. In fact, they can become the main drivers of churn. Explosive and powerful rotation drives. Any training that overlooks this aspect is not doing its due diligence. So we want to make sure we include that feature as well. We'll include all the right functions and perform them in the right sequence, and we'll go over all the anatomy here, so you understand what it is you're trying to accomplish and get an idea of ​​the muscles that are doing it. the work for you.

When it comes to the anatomy part, it can sometimes be confusing. But it all gets a lot easier when we do what we always do with the "Perfect" series, which is break down the muscle markers. As you can see here, the abdominal muscle, the rectus abdominis, is quite identifiable. In fact, what I want you to look at is not simply how easily it is noticeable, but what is the direction of the fibers? What are you attaching? It rises and falls, from north to south, joining the rib cage to the pelvis. It is what drives the flexion movement of our body, from top to bottom or from bottom to top.

We know we can take advantage of this movement, while also realizing that it's not the only thing going on because all you have to do is look at another muscle here, like the obliques. If you look at the external obliques, which are the muscles visible above the internal obliques, you can see that the direction is oriented at an angle. At an oblique angle. That's where they got the name. The reason for this is that it has a different function. It's going to be really good at helping us rotate and control rotation like I mentioned. So, we will have opportunities to do it if we follow the fibers, as always.

The internal obliques, ironically, run in the opposite direction. But it does the same thing. It controls the rotation in another way, again, working in conjunction with the obliques on the other side to produce some really magnificent things when it comes to rotation. But then we can look at another muscle here. That is the transverse abdomen. This one works more like a weight belt. Literally, around your waist. The idea is that this is driving stability. We want to take advantage of that because we can do certain exercises better than others to make the most of it. I'm going to show you how to do it.

Finally, the forgotten core muscle, as I have always eluded, the serratus. The interdigitation – it's true, I said 'interdigitation' – of the obliques with the serratus itself is there for a reason. There is a reason why they work together and prefer to work together. If we can do that, we will reach a level of perfection that is lacking in other workouts that don't do it. So, we start this with a bottom-up motion. Remember, we talk about wanting to do them when we are stronger or have more energy. The bottom-up movement will drive this. If we look at the beginner version here, we start with the reverse iso crunch, with the main function centered on that pelvis.

At the beginning I talked about how the attachment of the ribcage to the pelvis means that we are trying to pull the pelvis towards the ribcage, not rock it. You don't see me doing this. You don't see me moving my legs up and down, up and down. That becomes a movement driven by the hip flexors. If we simply isolate the pelvic lift, we will do a better job of engaging the abs and forcing them to do what they are supposed to do. Now, if you want to make this more difficult, we'll look at the advanced side here.

This is a hanging x-ray. The advantage of hanging x-rays is twofold. Number one: it's harder because we have to lift the weight off our legs, instead of having our leg bent. Number two: we get them up for a longer period of time than when we're lying down. The strength curve of these exercises is different. Longer tension in the hanging climb than in any variation of a lying climb. More importantly, another thing we have is the accessory movement of being able to bring the legs together, adducting the legs, stabilizing the pelvis from bottom to top with the activation of the adductors.

So x-rays allow us to do that. So, either way, whether you're starting to develop the perfect beginner workout or you're starting to develop the advanced workout, this is where you should start. Moving on to the next exercise, this is our bottom-up rotation movement. If you look at the beginner version here, we have something called a seated ab circle. This is an exercise in which we achieve some stability in the upper part of the body because we can keep our hands in contact with the ground, which is perfect for beginners doing these workouts. We're going to make clockwise circles and counterclockwise circles.

If you want to make it harder, we just step it up a little bit. We make these hanging leg spirals. Again, this is like a hanging leg raise, which we know is harder with extended leg length, but we'll add a little hip twist at the end to achieve that rotation. In any case, what I want you to notice is the rotational stability feature. We mentioned it at the beginning. We're not trying to avoid rotation here. In fact, we're not trying to do anything explosive with the rotation, but we are trying to control the amount of rotation we have.

Once again, when we look back, we begin to see this ab workout take shape. Whether in the beginner form or the more advanced form, we are on our way to achieving both the features and the sequence we are looking for to make this work best. Continuing with the rotation theme now, we'll move on to the obliques. Again, this is where I like to place these muscles throughout the workout. If you train your obliques too late, again, I think you'll end up feeling too fatigued to do them well. So what we want to do at the beginner level is do this reclining elbow to knee bend.

The main thing we need to focus on here is function. We're driving rotation here and we're driving it in the direction of the oblique fibers. Remembering that both the internal oblique and external oblique will work together to drive rotation in one direction and then the opposite pair will drive rotation in the other direction. As we move towards the more difficult version for the advanced, we will now look at something called a tornado chop. This is where we are going to use the band with the hanging pull-up bar for the first time. What we want to do here is add some resistance.

Driving the band to the side. Again, creating rotation. The idea is that no matter what you do with your obliques, you'd better rotate or move in some direction to the left or right if you really want to hit them harder. This is a great opportunity and as we develop these workouts, again, here's the beginner, here's the advanced. You can start to see this is really starting to take shape. Now we start moving forward and transitioning all the bottom-up driven movements into some mid-range movement. We're still involving bottom-up movement, but we're combining it with some top-down movement.

You can see that at the beginner level we are doing something called elbow to knee on the opposite side. This is a variation of the table. You guys know I'm not a big fan of the plank when it comes to using it as another recovery exercise. If we know we can hold a plank for 2, 3, or 4 minutes, then you're not doing a hard enough version of the plank. This is the first place I would take a step forward for beginners because what we're doing here is challenging some rotational stability and that anti-extension component. That function of the abdominals to prevent our lower back from sinking when we lift two points of contact from the ground.

If you want to do this for advanced people, we'll move the top down and the bottom up, but we'll do them at the same time and add a little twist. with this V-up scissors. Here, we are simply trying to maintain the scissor leg and the V-up at the same time. This is a little easier than it sounds because the up-and-down motion will help shorten the lever arm of the legs, relative to the torso. But don't be fooled. This is not easy. But it is feasible. Especially at this point in training. As you can see, once again, we continue to develop these workouts here.

No matter which one you are following, this is a challenging exercise, but it will be rewarding. I promise. This is probably my favorite part of training. Some of my favorite exercise options occur here with top-down rotation because most of the time they are performed top-down with your feet in contact with the ground. The first exercise here, if you are more of a beginner, will work on that anti-rotation component and the function of the abdominals. That is the step of this oak tree. Here you must place the band in front of your body, extended as much as you can.

You are going to step as far as you can without letting any movement of your arms go back in the opposite direction. If you are strong enough, if you can avoid rotation, your arms will not move. If you start seeing them return to the anchor point every time, then you are not strong enough. Either you need to lighten the resistance of the band or go out a little less. Now, when we move to the more advanced side, this gives us a great opportunity to become more explosive. Here we can do something called a mallet swing, which is a very explosive ground-based rotational movement.

Again, why do I love these up and down rotation movements? You can see here; I'm driving a lot of rotation. Even from – you can see the turn of the foot on the ground to help me get as much power and strength as I can. This could easily be a medicine ball throw against a wall where you can express all your power because you are getting rid of the ball. As I said, we are not limited to just these exercises. There are so many options, but if you understand the mindset of why we selected what we did here, then the opportunity to add different exercises here will be endless.

Now that we've fully transitioned to up-and-down movements, we have an exercise in common. Differentiating only between the beginner and advanced version by the resistance ofthe band you are using. Before you think you have to run out and buy a different band, don't. You just have to wrap it differently. If I wrap it like this, we have the single band that we're going to pull down, like you see me doing here in the beginner version. If I want to make this harder, all I have to do is wrap it over the bar and then grab a portion in each hand, and I've effectively doubled the resistance by shortening the length of that band.

But either way, there are two things I want you to focus on in these up and down movements. The first is how we are doing it. You won't see me doing this. I'm not sitting with my hip flexors. I'm not just allowing my pelvis to drop toward my heels. In fact, if I do this right my pelvis should never go towards my heels. We want to do what anatomy dictates. That is, pulling the rib cage down and forward, towards the pelvis. Just sitting there is cheating on every rep and you won't get anything out of it.

The second thing you want to focus on is what is happening here with the transverse abdomen. Remember I talked about that muscle at the beginning. This is a great opportunity and place to work. Can we create some core bracing stability, so to speak, before we do that? In fact, you'll find yourself less inclined to want to fall for that hip flexor trick if you do this brace first. To do that, you just have to flatten your stomach. How would you feel if you entered an ocean full of ice water? You would want to get in and flatten yourself because of how cold it is.

You want to do the same here. You flatten, squeeze and use that internal weight belt to create stability. Once you're there, pull down and forward toward your pelvis. We're building these perfect side-to-side workouts so you can jump back and forth, if necessary, or follow a track. Either way, you're on the right track. Finally, while most ab workouts would have ended at this point, ours isn't there yet. We have one more exercise left. We want to work the serratus. I talked about its involvement in integrating with the obliques and why we want to do it. In fact, it is part of our Holy Trinity when we talked about this in a previous video.

The fact is that we can do this quite easily. If you are a beginner, I want you to do this exercise called the plank push. What we do is put ourselves in that plank position, but not to do a plank, but to do something else, and that is, we are going to dig our forearms into the ground. Get your shoulder blades apart. Start with them together and spread them as far apart as you can by lengthening them, pushing through your forearms toward the floor. You'll feel this activate the muscles right there in the serratus, which will create some stability in the shoulder blades as they relate to the entire ribcage.

That is important. That's a function of core stability. So we can work on that here and at the same time help develop the muscles that will be clearly visible as they work alongside the obliques. If we want to make it more difficult, we can drill this board. When I take the band off and away from my body, it's that extra push. Don't just say it in front of yourself. Push forward and then another 2" or 3". You will really feel the serratus doing the work. There you have it guys. The perfect abs workout in the books. Regardless of whether you're following the beginner version you see here or the advanced version I'll show you in a couple of seconds, the fact of the matter is that you need to understand that there is no such thing as "perfect." .

We know that we can have many other abdominal exercises that could include this workout, but when you understand why you are doing what you are doing and how to do what you are doing, you can get pretty close to perfection. This is my best attempt. If you're looking for programs where we do the same thing, we try to put science into the selection of what we do because we know how important it is, all of our programs are based on that same principle. All are available at ATHLEANS.com. If you are looking for more perfect workouts, they are all available for you on this channel.

You just have to make sure you are subscribed and turn on notifications so you don't miss any. At the same time, anything you want me to cover, I will do my best to do it for you. Leave it in the comments below and I'll try to do so in the coming days and weeks. Alright, I'll see you soon.