3 Reasons You Will Never Have ABS

What’s going on Nation! Today I’m going to share with you the THREE mains reasons why your abs refuse to show!

And let’s get this out of the way now…I’m not going to be covering diet mistakes since that is pretty obvious. If you want to see your abs, you need to have a low body fat percentage. Period.

In this article, I’m actually going to be addressing those of you who are killing yourselves trying to get your abs to grow and get that blocky look, but it’s just not happening for you, no matter how hard you try.

So without any delay, let’s dive into the first reason why you are having a hard time building up your abs!

Reason #1 – No Spinal Flexion And / Or Extension

Regardless of the ab exercise you’re doing, you always have to remember that without spinal flexion and extension you’re not really targeting your abs.

Ab training is identical in many ways with any other muscle group training and we know that in order to get a muscle to grow, you need work through the entire range of motion, starting from a full stretch and finishing with a nice, hard squeeze and contraction.

For starters, let’s address the basic floor crunch. Most people apparently, think that going as fast and as sloppy as possible will do anything for their abs! And the truth is they just want to “get abs done”. But that’s not the right mindset to have when training abs or any other muscle group for that matter. It doesn’t make any sense spending an hour doing a bicep curl, but when it comes to abs, suddenly going up and down as fast as you can is the solution!

What you need to do instead is establish a mind-muscle connection when training your abs. So, for the basic floor crunch, just lay on your back with your feet flat and your knees bent and start by extending your spine as much as you can. In lamest terms, just begin every rep by forcing that abdominal stretch and having an arch in your lower back. You need to feel a nice, deep stretch on your rectus abdominis and having your hands behind your head while crunching can help with that.

Then, as you come up, focus on contracting your abs intensely but also getting that spinal flex as well, which again just means rounding and bending your lower back! Then slowly start descending by fighting the eccentric, return to the starting position and get a full stretch once more. That’s how all your reps should look like, no exceptions!

Regardless of your ab exercise choices, this tip still applies. Whether it is cable ab pulldowns, or weighted abdominal crunches you never want to bend at the hips and try to move as much weight as possible. Instead, if you want the abs to do the work, always make sure you are fully flexing and extending your lower back on every repetition on every exercise!

Reason #2 – Not “Breathing Out” During The Concentric Phase Of Reps

It’s very simple guys. If you are not breathing properly when doing your repetitions you will be missing out on basically the top portion of every single rep you’re doing.

Always breathe all the air out of your belly on the concentric part of every rep to make sure you are not cutting the range of motion short! In fact, try it right now. If you try to crunch all the way up while holding your breath, you will notice that there is this “air bubble” in your stomach that is holding you back, almost blocking you in a way. As soon as you breathe all the air out though, you will be able to go much higher and get a much better squeeze at the top.

Like before, this applies to ALL abdominal exercises. Remember to breathe out on every single rep, and as you breathe out, flex your abs as hard as you can and then go back to the starting position. This will really help you establish that mind-muscle connection!

Reason #3 – Not Training With Enough Frequency Or Resistance

This is a big one. You need to train your abs 3 – 4 times a week if you really want to see results. What I typically like to do is split my abs up into two workouts and then repeat those workouts throughout the week. So it looks like this:

• Monday: Upper & Lower Abs
• Tuesday: Lower Abs & Obliques
• Wednesday: Rest
• Thursday: Upper & Lower Abs
• Friday: Lower Abs & Obliques
• Saturday: Rest, and repeat from the start

The second part of this equation is that if you are not doing enough resistance training with your abs, you’ll never be able to build those blocks. Your abs are going to respond to resistance training like any other muscle in your body. If you want big biceps, you can’t be lifting 10lbs dumbbells for 80 reps and expect them to grow. But people seem to think that if they train abs with 30, 40 or even 50 reps with just their bodyweight every time they hit the gym, they will magically build up their abs. It isn’t going to happen!

The correct approach is actually a combination of low reps/heavy weight and high reps/light weight. You need both components in order to develop your abs, volume and resistance.

So, the first two days I train abs, I target them with very high volume and the next two days I train them, I lean towards more weighted exercises and working them hard with a lot of resistance while staying in that 10 – 12 rep range in order to really rip and tear them down and build those blocks!

Now, if you want to see specifically which exercises I perform and how I perform them, I have a different video for you guys I did a while ago and it’s called “How To Build More Visible & BlockyAbs” and it will definitely help you get on the right track by equipping you with the right tools to start training your abs properly TODAY!

One last thing before I leave you to your training…This is something really cool that I actually keep around the house as well and it’s an Ab Mat by IronBullStrength. A lot of gyms have these too and if you are not used to going into spinal flexion and extension while training your abs, this will force you to do it! 

You just need to lay on it and you will immediately notice that from the starting position, you already have to generate more force just to come up and complete a rep. It’s going to really intensify your abdominal crunches and it’s really handy to have around the house!

Just remember to always breathe out while you crunch up and squeeze those abs to the max on every single rep of every single abs exercise!

I hope you enjoyed these tips and I hope they help you take your ab training to the next level!

If you have any questions or suggestions for future videos, feel free to leave them down in the comments below and as always…more good stuff coming soon!