When it comes to abdominal workouts, mistakes can easily happen. Here are six mistakes to avoid to make your abdominal workout as effective as possible.
Some love it, others hate it: abdominal training. Regardless of whether it’s fun or not, one thing is certain: if you want six-pack abs, you have to train your core.
Unfortunately, the abdomen is particularly susceptible to execution errors that can reduce the effectiveness of the training or even lead to injuries.
We’ll give you six tips on how to get the most out of your abdominal workout.
During a full-body workout, the abdominal workout is quickly pushed to the end and “checked off” with little effort.
But it makes a big difference whether you concentrate on the movements and carry them out slowly and carefully, or whether you frantically do a few crunches without concentrating on muscle tension.
In addition, the muscles should have enough time to regenerate between sets. To save time, a second exercise for a different muscle group can be performed between abdominal exercises. For example: sit-ups alternating with lunges. During lunges, the abdominal muscles have time to recover.
No matter how good an exercise may be, it is only effective if it is done correctly. Three errors are particularly common:
If you want to have a defined stomach, you shouldn’t just train the front and side abdominal muscles. The back also plays an important role. The goal is a strong core, which also includes the back, hips and shoulders.
Together, these form a unit that stabilizes the body. This means: The opposing back should also be trained regularly. This will help you prevent pain and poor posture in the long term.
A balanced, full-body workout or exercises that use multiple muscle groups, such as planks, are best.
In order for a muscle to grow, new stimuli must be provided. If you only ever do one exercise, you will soon no longer see any success. The body has become accustomed to the movement and does not need to build new muscles.
Try adding variety to your abdominal workouts or varying your favorite exercises. For example, weights or bands can be added to make an exercise more strenuous.
Muscle recovery is at least as important as training. During exercise, muscle fibers are destroyed. This is completely normal. In order for the body to repair them, it needs a recovery period in which the muscle is not put under strain.
There is nothing wrong with exercising on two consecutive days, but you should not train the same muscle groups. Injuries and symptoms of fatigue can result.
So it’s not wrong to do gentle exercises like yoga, Pilates or a walk on some days.
You’ve probably heard the saying “abs are made in the kitchen”. This doesn’t mean that you should do sit-ups in the kitchen, but rather that your diet has a big influence on your abdominal muscles.
Even the most toned abs will only be visible if your body fat percentage is low enough. For women this is around 20 percent. So if you want to have a six-pack, you should change your diet in addition to training your abdominal muscles. Protein, vegetables and healthy fats can help reduce body fat.
Endurance sports should not be avoided either. Sports like jogging, cycling, swimming, etc. burn a lot of calories and melt fat.
The original for this article “Six reasons why your six-pack is still a long time coming” comes from FitForFun.