4 Tips to Stronger Sexier Abs
Best lower ab workout for getting the most out of training your abs. It’s important to be sure you get the most out of your abs every time you exercise.
The lower abs are definitely the most difficult to train.
Why is this?
This is because the lower abs are naturally weighted. When thinking about the best lower ab workout, the best exercises involve the lower abs being naturally weighted. This is because you are lifting the lower body by doing bottom up movements which always includes lifting the weight of your legs.
Weighted ab exercises are great for adding additional fitness to your ab training. You have probably seen guys with flat stomachs. Flat stomachs are for women. Men want to have ripped six pack abs. In order to make sure we are doing this, we need to make sure we are overloading the muscles. So, the principles still apply here when it comes to training the lower abs.
What is One of the Best Ways to Train the Lower Abs?
Hanging Leg Raise – Always Included in the Best Lower Ab Workout
Some variation of the Hanging Leg Raise movement is the answer. Even if you can’t perform the traditional Hanging Leg Raise, you can do a modified version of the movement such as a Captains Chair.
4 Things People Do Wrong with Hanging Leg Raises
1. Underhand Grip. When you first approach a bar to do a Hanging Leg Raise, switch your hands around. Don’t use an overhand grip. You want to use an underhand grip because your biceps are naturally strong and should be able to contribute to your ability to grip the bar. Many people complain of not being able to hold onto the bar long enough to fatigue the abs.
When you go underhand, you will have the added strength that the biceps provide so you can do a lot more reps just by making this simple tweak.
2. Stabilize Your Body. The second thing you must do is make sure you are stabilizing your body. The techniques you see in most gyms is complete garbage. What’s popular doesn’t really use your abs at all. You just end up using momentum to swing your legs around. The more you swing the leg, the less your abs are working. The more stable you stay, the more your abs are being used. So, be sure to stabilize even if you have to reset in between every single rep. It’s important to take the extra split second to be sure you are keeping a stable position.
3. Pay Attention to Your Body Movement. The next big thing you need to do is be sure you are aware of how your body is moving. Imagine yourself as a sheet of paper. You should be rolling up that piece of paper, not folding it. You don’t want to just be folding because you would just be using your hip flexors.
This is a big problem. The hip flexors can dominate this movement if you don’t focus on rolling the body. The abs do work isometrically to help stabilize the pelvis when you fold the body, but this doesn’t mean your abs are doing all that they could be doing. This is a big problem because you aren’t overloading the abs as much as you can in the shortest amount of time possible. It will actually take much longer to fatigue the abs isometrically than it would in a natural movement pattern. So, let’s get the abs to work more functionally by focusing on rolling the abs like a piece of paper. Get the legs and whole body curling up in one motion.
4. Show Your Ass. If someone is standing in front of you watching you do this exercise, they should be able to see your butt on every rep. If all they see is the top of your knees, then you aren’t doing it right. You want to be sure you are getting your pelvis into a posterior tilt by showing your butt.
Best Lower Ab Workout
Lower ab exercises are the most effective because they are the hardest. You never see a guy that has a great set of lower abs that doesn’t also have a great set of upper abs. So, if you have a limited amount of time to exercise, then let’s get started working on some of these hard ab movements. If you have to start with the Captains Chair, that’s OK. Go ahead and start there if you need to. Even there, you still need to demonstrate the same principles because they always apply.
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