How Often to Work Out Your Abs? (ULTIMATE AB QUESTION!)

What ab exercises should you never skip? Find out in the program

so how often should you be trained your abs with never not one of these options guys I’m going to show you which one of these is right and more importantly give you five reasons why I think so today what’s up guys jeff cavaliere athleanx. com today we have to answer the important question of how often should you be training your abs now the answer if you depend on who you listen to as most things do these days especially here on YouTube and there’s a lot of opinions too because we have seven choices really we know that never is not an option because you wouldn’t be watching this video or this channel if you felt that way but we have seven options and guys there’s arguments made for each one but I’m going to tell you my answers right here at the very end I believe seven days a week about training is appropriate and not only appropriate but recommended but more importantly the value of this video is going to come from me not just telling you how many days a week but showing you five reasons why I believe this is the case so let’s get started right away I’ll give you my very first reason why okay let’s get it started first and foremost when we talk about training your abs guys there are two very different and important types of training there’s direct ab training doing your actual ab workouts and then for us here at athlean-x a very big second indirect ab training now indirect AB training guys as I’ve shown you before I’m showing you again here it occurs when you can put the core into the type of training exercises that you do that is what athlean-x is all about guys I say it before I’ll say it again we put the core at the core of everything you guys do there’s a lot of indirect ab training in every single workout so if you consider four or five workouts per week in all the indirect core work that you should be undergoing then you add into your direct ab work which again I think even to rent ad work guys we should be in that five six to seven day range and I’ll show you again and more reasons ahead why that is we are clearly at seven days a week okay so you have to know consider both aspects because if you want to looking like an athlete you guys are training like one guys athletes put the core at the center of every single thing they do number two guys we have to remember that abs are just one part of your core right when we talk about the core we have to consider all the muscles that complete the core the transverse abdominus the internal external obliques even as we wrap around to the back the spinal erectors right all these muscles together guys that is what’s working to do one thing and that’s to support the spine so if you think that these muscles can be part-timers and only contribute when they want to no chance guys when your main role is to support your spine you better be ready to work each and every day and therefore you better be ready for the volumes that we’re going to want to train them with to make sure that they’re ready to do that one very important job number three your core guys has postural responsibilities so like I said if your job is to protect your spine you better be willing and able to do that at a moment’s notice every single day not just when you want to supporting that guys if you look beyond that into the fiber composition of the muscles of our core we find that there’s a lot more type 1 muscle fibers in these muscles than there is anywhere else again supporting the reason that higher frequency longer duration training is the way to go now just to make sure we get this out of the way log or duration higher frequency whatever we want to talk about guys seven days a week it all revolves around one key thing especially when you have type 1 muscle fibers and that is quality contraction hey this is not about explosiveness this is about engaging and operating the muscle that you’re intending to use and again in this case making the core work ok so quality high quality frequency is key number four we get spared the rigors of frequent ab training because we often have one key thing missing guys when we do our ab work and that is an eccentric overload right when we look at the methods of overloading our ABS predominantly we’re using our own body weight and gravity to assist in making that more difficult but there’s not the type of overload we get when we’re looking at traditional benchpress in the east jerk muscle damage that can occur when we train that way and when we realize that the growth response that we’re looking for with an eccentric overload on a bench press is not we’re looking for here anyway with our ABS and realizing again the type 1 fiber types that these predominantly are doesn’t really lend itself to that anyway or spare the overtraining effect that we would normally get because we don’t train these ABS with a lot of eccentric overload or we really don’t train them with a lot of overload at all again it’s just about executing high-quality contractions more frequently in doing it every single day to be more in line with what it is our ABS are looking for us to do anyway ok become more postural nature become more repetitive put them to work the way they crave to be working each and every day number 5 for you guys that are worried about over developing your abs guys remember anatomically these are very thin muscles I talked about muscle belly fitness normally we’re looking for muscle belly thickness quads biceps the chest the deltoids you ain’t going to find it here guys the abs again our postural muscles very again anatomically thin their point is to become protective of this entire region it’s not for hypertrophy so even if you bang away rep after rep here and do hi bombs you don’t have to worry about hypertrophy in this area and causing an over development right that’s not what we want we want flatter tighter harder stomachs you’re going to get that if you start training them the way they want to be trained more frequently but those high quality repetitions okay so before we wrap up let’s cover the two caveats here number one if you’re a guy whose diet stinks is you go from training your abs twice a week to seven days a week like I’m suggesting you know you’re going to have a great looking six-pack covered by a whole hell of a lot of fat so you got to make sure number one you have to get your diet in check if you want to have your abs aspirations come true secondly if you’re going to start training your abs more frequently you want to make sure that you are stretching them right we know that again especially if somebody that sits down a lot if you sit your abdominals are going to flex your spine so we already have complications of tight hip flexors causing us to fall forward you know tight abdominal region can also cause us to fall forward so you want to stretch your abs out I’m showing you one really simple easy way to do it right here over physio ball but you can do this anywhere anyhow guys you can use a foam roller you can just simply bend back the way I’m showing you here just to make sure again you stretch out the ABS get a rotation to make sure you get your entire core nice and loose and keep that flexible okay guys there you have it seven the magic number when it comes to training your abs but five the reasons why I feel you should guys remember if you’re looking for a solution you’re looking for that jumpstart to get your ab training in order as well as your entire athletic training program then head to athleanx. com guys I’m telling you we lay it all out on the line for you daily workouts abdominal workouts that change every single day a meal plan a nutrition plan to get you guys at that body fat level necessary to reveal them and then just a smart training approach that puts the science back in strength to show you exactly why we do what we do and more importantly how we get the