I exercise regularly yet feel or see little results in my abs. How can I tone and define my core?
I exercise on a regular basis and, for the most part, have a healthy diet. My exercise is almost daily and varies from cario, weights, yoga and so on. My arms, legs, and butt will often feel sore (which makes me feel that my exercise was effective) but never my abdomen. I do not feel that I am effectively working that area. What am I doing wrong or what can I do to really tone and define that area?
Hi Mrm,
Even though you mentioned that your diet was good, I want to bring to light just briefly the timeless saying that "Abs are made in the kitchen" which means that you can only have a nice flat belly if your diet is right. So when we talk about the exercises, please don't abandon your good nutritional habits.
If you are working your abs and not seeing results you might be overtraining them. They are like any other muscle. They will grow and get definition when they are at rest not when you are working them out. So train them every other day.
Just with any other body part, when training your abs, your workouts must be both consistent and have variety for maximum results. Which means you cannot just train your abs for 2 weeks and then go on hiatus. This is a continuous, consistent process. Also vary the exercises from time to time don't keep doing the same exercises all the time.
For that, you need to get familiar with the anatomy of your abs and core and what exercises work them out and with each abs training session aim to workout the entire abs region. Your abs are primarily made up of 4 muscle groups, they are
1) upper abs
2) side abs
3) lower abs
4) deep abs
Exercises that target the upper abs are like the crunch and those that target your obliques or side abs involve twisting or turning such as the bicycle, the lower abs involve movement of the legs such as knee raises and training the transverse abdominis or the deep abs involve plank type exercises. I can recommend a good book called the Abs Diet by David Zinczenko.
So to recap
More is not better, don't over train and train your abs every other day.
Be consistent
Vary the exercises
Workout all 4 major parts of your abs.
Kenn Kihiu
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