ok. i read in a magizine that the best abb work out is to like...when ever your at work, or jome, or sitting or standin that you should flex your abs. like flex them like your gonna get punched in the stomach. Apparently it helps your posture and its just realy good for your abs? is this true?
Is it realy true?
- Thread starter Excder
- Start date
The best thing you can do to show your abs is squats, deads, presses, etc...which are all compound movements that stimulate your core muscles indirectly. They can be hit directly 1-2 times a week if you choose.
All of this combined with a smart diet approach is all you need to show your abs.
All of this combined with a smart diet approach is all you need to show your abs.
Word dude..
From a postural and day to day living standpoint, it is really good for your abs.
If you are looking to increase strength, or are trying to get more definition. A lot more needs to be done.
I agree with LV about the squats, deads, and presses. As well as nutrition being important.
I differ in opinion on directly training the abs. It can be done every workout with great effectiveness.
Also, when training abs, remember not to neglect your low back.
Why do you feel that way?
Because a high percentage of low back injuries are because of low muscular endurance in the core. If you train every day you increase the work capacity of the abdominal area, you are at lower risk of injury.
You do not want your core to run out of gas before your legs on a squat do you?
For example, If you need your core to support your spine in squats, deads, and pretty much every other exercise you do, you are going to need your core to have a higher work capacity than other areas. Since it is used during everything.
Also, you can train your core for different things on different days. So on heavy lower body days where the demand is high, that is a good day to train abs and core heavy as well.
On days where you are doing more upper body work, you can train static strength, stability, and higher endurance work. The stimulus is different on each training day so it lowers the chances of overtraining the area.
Relying too heavily on heavy lifts like squats "that also recruit" the abdominal muscle is a mistake. People, in general, do not spend enough time training abs and core.
People who have big squats are also able to do heavy abdominal work, and generally train core on a daily basis. (heavy / light whatever, the work is getting done). Most of these people also train lower and upper back every workout. Not always heavy, but to increase work capacity of the muscles that stabilize the spine.
This is certainly true and supported by the research and evidence...however, what is required to produce significant core muscle endurance, in your example, is far less than you are suggesting:
"The task of daily living is not compromised by insufficient strength but rather insufficient endurance. After an injury it has been demonstrated that the motor system loses its fitness, and abnormal relationships of muscle activity occur. Endurance training is emerging to be far more important in stabilizing the spine than strength. Strong abdominal muscles do not provide the preventive or therapeutic benefit that was thought. Sit ups, with knees bent or even abdominal crunches have not demonstrated any real benefit for the low back. Further, pelvic tilts may actually make the low back worse. There is little support for low back flexibility to improve back health and reduce the risk of future back trouble. Research is demonstrating that endurance has a much greater preventive value than strength. In fact, emphasis on endurance should precede specific strengthening exercise in a gradual exercise program. Increasing evidence supports endurance exercise in both reducing the incidence of low back injury and as treatment. This would include such daily activities as walking, cycling, swimming or repetitive low demand exercise to specific muscles. Co-operative muscle activity is a necessary prerequisite to obtain the desired endurance. That co-operative muscle activity is dependent on proper joint mechanical motion as is proper joint motion dependent on co-operative muscle activity…spinal stability is achieved with very low levels of abdominal co-contraction, focusing on a single muscle is misguided..."
-Stuart McGill, PhD
Or you may be increasing your risk of injury because of insufficient rest and recovery to the core musculature, causing premature muscle failure, reduced force output, and poor synergist activities. If you don't give a muscle sufficient rest/recovery, over time this will lead to physiological damage and poor motor control and activation.
No, so why would you attempt to overtrain the muscle so that this happens? Also, if your goal is to train appropriate synergist firing during squats, motor learning and neuroscience has shown us that the CNS understands movement, not muscle. Training for specificity requires training within the functional purpose, not through isolation outside of the purpose.
In fact, continuing with the concept above, unpublished emg data presented by Jeffrey McBride, PhD at last year's NSCA annual conference indicated that the conventional deadlift and overhead squat produced significantly more core activation than did low back hyperextensions, Supermans, right side holds, quadruped and sit-ups, indicating the functional relevance of compound activity for core strengthening and functional carryover.
Real world application: if you want your core to be strong and capable of functioning during lifts, then you need to train with proper form and emphasize proper co-activation during your lifting, and not in isolated activities outside of the specific functional lifts.
True, but the core will be trained within the context of the functional application, as evidenced above. Training it again can lead to overworking the muscles, and by not allowing rest, physiological breakdown.
Stimulus is stimulus without rest, and regardless of the mode of stimulus, without recovery you will be increasing your risk of overtraining that muscle/muscle group. Periodization demands that intensities and volume (or tonnage in total) be controlled through the training cycle, and you are not allowing for that volume control. You simply can't engage a muscle/muscle group in endless amounts of volume and not expect a decrement in performance, or in the least a negative impact on training response.
Assuming that proper form and technique are used, along with the associated recruitment, it is not only enough, but serves more functional purpose, especially in the context of spinal stabilization and prehab. Again, it's not the isolated exercise that improves function and synergist activation, it is the task-specific activity that improves each function. By learning to recruit the core musculature within specific ADL's, including those activities that reproduce the demands of ADL's (lifting, pushing, carrying, etc), the trainee will produce functional response and strength/endurance. By training outside of functional relevance with crunches, prone body positioning, etc, the trainee does not produce functional carryover and motor learning appropriate for protecting the spine in ADL's.
Correlation does not imply causation. In addition, the Westside protocol, the most successful PL template to date, as well as OL periodization strategies, do not have their lifters training in the same assistance lifts or muscle groups daily without proper rest and recovery.
The muscles that make up the core are no different physiologically than any other muscles of the body. You wouldn't train your chest every day or your biceps every day...why would it be ok, therefore, to train your core musculature everyday? You cannot separate or isolate specific muscles within the core, and their function demands synergistic co-contractions which would also defeat the purpose even if you could...therefore, you cannot specifically "target and train the core" with sufficient stimulus for adaptation everyday without sufficient rest and expect to avoid overreaching and eventually overtraining.
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That was a lot. I will start from topic to topic.
You big quote from -Stuart McGill, PhD (which I will not re-paste) Started the second sentence with -
Since we are not discussing after injuries, I do not see how any of that applies.
Strength is important when talking about lifting bigger weight. As well as we were not discussing specific exercises, but training the core in general.
Co-operative muscle activity can be used with exercises that put higher stress on the core and abs. Increasing the ability to stabilize a heavier load.
Don't take this out of context. This may be true for day to day living (which is what McGill is referring to, I have his books as well) The ability to stabilize under a load is very different.
The key word here is "if." You can train a muscle every workout without causing damage.
Who said anything about overtraining? Again it is possible to train any muscle during every workout. If you adjust the workload properly you can even decrease the recovery time and increase the result.
With how much weight?
These are not exercises that anyone would use past the beginning stages of training.
Again. With how much weight?
If you compare loaded exercises to unloaded exercises you are going to get the result of -
It's like comparing a body weight squat to a loaded barbell squat.
By this logic a bench presser would not need to train specific triceps movements. A squatter would not need to train specific hamstring movements. We all know that they do train these things. Core exercises are assistance exercises, just like training triceps and hamstrings.
Here again the operative word is "can." As mentioned above there are many ways to train that will decrease recovery time by training a muscle again as opposed to letting it rest.
Training a muscle again in the proper way at the proper intensity will help not hurt recovery. You can train what would seem to be a very high volume without the negative ramifications of overtraining if the intensity is properly controlled. The idea that letting a muscle completely rest is letting it recover is archaic at best. More often than not you can do activity that will assist in the recovers as well as allow for more frequent intense bouts of exercises due to the better recovery time.
Once again we are not discussing the use of specific exercises but the training of the core in general. I agree, crunches suck, and there are issues with some of the more traditional abdominal training exercises. Though this is not on the topic of discussion.
That is pure BS. Lou himself will tell you that training Glute Ham Raise and Revers hypers every workout is a good idea. (and in some cases every day and multiple times per day) You will see the westside members doing standing abs and a myriad of other exercises almost every workout.
What is this specific stimulus for adaptation that you speak of? What if one of the days is training the core for recovery? Other days for muscular endurance, still other days for strength?
Finally
If this is the case then why?
This does not make sense.
You big quote from -Stuart McGill, PhD (which I will not re-paste) Started the second sentence with -
Since we are not discussing after injuries, I do not see how any of that applies.
Strength is important when talking about lifting bigger weight. As well as we were not discussing specific exercises, but training the core in general.
Co-operative muscle activity can be used with exercises that put higher stress on the core and abs. Increasing the ability to stabilize a heavier load.
Don't take this out of context. This may be true for day to day living (which is what McGill is referring to, I have his books as well) The ability to stabilize under a load is very different.
The key word here is "if." You can train a muscle every workout without causing damage.
Who said anything about overtraining? Again it is possible to train any muscle during every workout. If you adjust the workload properly you can even decrease the recovery time and increase the result.
With how much weight?
These are not exercises that anyone would use past the beginning stages of training.
Again. With how much weight?
If you compare loaded exercises to unloaded exercises you are going to get the result of -
It's like comparing a body weight squat to a loaded barbell squat.
By this logic a bench presser would not need to train specific triceps movements. A squatter would not need to train specific hamstring movements. We all know that they do train these things. Core exercises are assistance exercises, just like training triceps and hamstrings.
Here again the operative word is "can." As mentioned above there are many ways to train that will decrease recovery time by training a muscle again as opposed to letting it rest.
Training a muscle again in the proper way at the proper intensity will help not hurt recovery. You can train what would seem to be a very high volume without the negative ramifications of overtraining if the intensity is properly controlled. The idea that letting a muscle completely rest is letting it recover is archaic at best. More often than not you can do activity that will assist in the recovers as well as allow for more frequent intense bouts of exercises due to the better recovery time.
Once again we are not discussing the use of specific exercises but the training of the core in general. I agree, crunches suck, and there are issues with some of the more traditional abdominal training exercises. Though this is not on the topic of discussion.
That is pure BS. Lou himself will tell you that training Glute Ham Raise and Revers hypers every workout is a good idea. (and in some cases every day and multiple times per day) You will see the westside members doing standing abs and a myriad of other exercises almost every workout.
What is this specific stimulus for adaptation that you speak of? What if one of the days is training the core for recovery? Other days for muscular endurance, still other days for strength?
Finally
If this is the case then why?
This does not make sense.
Your very first sentance reads "Because a high percentage of low back injuries are because of low muscular endurance in the core. If you train every day you increase the work capacity of the abdominal area, you are at lower risk of injury," so by your own post, we are.goergen1 said:
Not according to McGill, the leading researcher in the field. Further, if strength is necessary, that strength will be developed through natural adaptation to increased weights by the demands of the exercise. And we are not talking about training the core in general, but the assertion that you can "train the abs" every day, which is what I originally asked about. Because you never answered that specifically, we are now talking in circles about related issues.
How would proper motor patterns be developed and grooved/stimulated by taking the individual out of the functional position or movement and training them at a different task? If you read the next line, Dr. McGill specifically states that "That co-operative muscle activity is dependent on proper joint mechanical motion as is proper joint motion dependent on co-operative muscle activity" which is also dependent on proper arthrokinematics and osteokinematic relationships. Taken out of position, these motor patterns will not produce appropriate co-operative muscle activity. You claim that we're talking about "training the core in general," but how would you do this within the functional capacity other than the specific function itself?
Out of context? How is this out of context? The example here is clear: if ADL's are enough to produce sufficient spinal stabilization under normal "day living," then training with the specific intent to squat with proper form and motion is enough to produce adaptation/hypertrophy/strength-endurance in the same muscles to stabilize the spine under the new activity. That's the point specifically.
Sure, as long as you don't do enough to cause any adaptation to the muscle, which is fairly pointless, wouldn't you think? If you're calling techniques such as active recovery and the act of synergist recruitment "training" then I agree...but i wouldn't call that "...directly training the abs..." as you stated originally. That's like saying that walking is directly training your legs.
If that's not your meaning, then I'd be curious to see an example of a program of 6/more days of abdominal training without rest of a period of weeks/months designed to increase strength/endurance by providing enough stimulus for adaptation, since this goes against every tenant of exercise physiology and dual-factor theory that I know of...
I said overtraining, because to me 6 days of non-stop endurance exercise will produce this. Sure, Tara Nott squatted 12x/week during the peak of her training, but each session was exceptionally low in volume, and her goals were not endurance in any way. Not to mention that she was an athlete at the highest level of her sport...How do you propose training muscular strength-endurance in this fashion? Unless you're performing 2-3 sets of singles and doubles for your abs, how would this be done?
I don't recall since it was unpublished and being presented, but I assure you that Jeff McBride did not make such an obvious error in validity as to stack the table in favor of the compound lifts.
Why not? I could think of numerous reasons to use exercises like those in any level of training. And since they are specifically examples of abdominal and core endurance training exercises, what makes them poor choices? You have yet to indicate anything about your training model, so I am left to guess what you meant.
Why would that even matter? Basic biomechanical analysis shows us that sit-ups are a poor core activator and use the hip flexors primarily...it doesn't matter how much weight you use: they don't work.
This does not make sense.
No it's not: it's like comparing appropriate muscle activation for compound exercises vs. non-compound, isolated exercise.
No, by this a bench presser would not need to train specific isolation exercises like triceps kickbacks, a squatter would not need to train hamstring curls or leg extensions, which have been shown time and time again in the literature to have little to no functional carryover to the compound exercises. Accessory lifts that mimic the motor pattern and produce functional adaptations, such as pin presses, board presses, close-grip presses, etc, etc do work and do serve a purpose. "We all know that they train these things" is a fairly poor argument. I know many Olympic Weightlifters that don't...that's a pretty poor offer of evidence.
You can't be serious...you're arguing semantics here? Since you have yet to indicate the many ways that you will train your abdominals for volume with enough stimulus for growth and adaptation every day, I have to use the word "can," since I can't predict the outcome of any individual's training specifically. Just like you might say "playing in the street can lead to getting hit by a car," it would also be appropriate to say "working out 6 or 7 days per week can lead to overtraining."
Without intensity, you're performing active recovery. Nor did I say that you need to let a muscle rest with complete recovery, just that you need to allow for a certain amount of recovery. Even Dual Factor theory covers this: without appropriate deloading phases, you will allow fatigue to accumulate to detrimental measures. This may be parts of the microcycle, mesocycle, and macrocycle. This is not the same as bodybuilding "wait a week before you workout again" nonsense. Throughout this discussion you have repeatedly brought out Strawman arguments attacking things that I haven't said. You did this first when answering my original simple question, and you are doing this now. Again, "More often than not you can do activity that will assist in the recovers" is active recovery, which is not the same as training for adaptation.
Then what is the topic of discussion? I asked how you why you felt that you could train the abs every day, and part of your response included "People, in general, do not spend enough time training abs and core." This was never the topic of discussion either, and you have again constructed Strawman arguments that are irrelevant to my original question, which you never answered.
They do not workout every day. They have days off to allow for rest and proper recovery. You were advocating core exercises 6-7 days per week. This is another Strawman argument, which is deflecting the attention off of the original question.
Training the core for recovery is active recovery, not training. And the stimulus for endurance training could be considered low-level at best, and another form of active recovery. This is very different.
Basic exercise science and muscle physiology. Your question doesn't even make sense.
Insert the word "once" before the word "thought," and then add a period.
Ok, semantics aside. Staying on the topic of training abs every workout, and agreeing to the fact that I made some bad arguments.
Why do you consider "recovery training" not being "training?" You go to the gym, you do exercise with the specific goal of recovery.
If you recover the core faster and can train intense workouts more often, are you disagreeing that this is beneficial? I already know that you are not, but this is one of the points I am trying to make. Recovering faster and increasing the ability to do work is increasing the bodies ability to adapt to higher training stimulus. Therefore you are training for adaptation.
Second, recovery training does not need to be done in the "functional movement pattern." It can be done with many more conventional abs exercises.
Because in training, people do come out of the "functional movement pattern."
There are many exercises that you can do using Kettle Bells and bands (there are more, these are my examples) that will change the groove of the exercise. You can also use these implements to train the abs in the same plane and range of motion as major exercises. Using them to strengthen outside the functional pattern as well as inside the functional pattern.
So on a squat day you can do abdominal exercises that will strengthen the abs for the squatting movement. Like using the swing of the KB to fight against the force that would pull you out of position. Or doing standing abdominal work with bands or cables.
On a pressing day you can do abdominal exercises that will strengthen the abs within the confines of the press. Be it a bench press of a standing overhead press. You can do side bends with a pressing movement, rotational movements using KB, bands or both. So that your abs are more able to help the body recover from the times that you are outside the functional movement pattern.
In off days recovery work can be done for the abdominal area using any type of abdominal exercise. As long as the intensity is not so high that it will hinder the recovery process.
The above will have a person training abs nearly every day. By varying the number of sets and reps, effectively increasing both strength and endurance. As we all know varying the exercises reduces the potential for overtraining. Also specifically training the abs for the major exercises done on the training day of that exercise will increase the work capacity of the abs and core for those specific exercises.
You wanted examples of training every workout so there it is.
McGill states that "The amount of muscle activation needed to ensure sufficient stability depends on the task." As I have stated. The low levels of cocontraction are being stated for most tasks of daily living. (pg. 144 Low Back Disorders) He is not talking about the training of squats, deadlifts and other exercises, when higher leveld of muscle activity are necessary.
Most of the lifters at westside train 5-6 days per week. I can assure you that they are doing some sort of abs training on all of those days. (though some of it will be recovery training, which you have stated is not training)
I guess after all of this our main disagreement is that you do not consider training abs for recovery, training. If you do, you can train the abs every day. (nobody will, but many do 6 days per week)
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Lol...this really was an argument over symantics...When I hear "training" I think of weight training (or more loosely, sport-specific training). I've never considered a recovery session to be training, I would consider it an adjunct to training. In other words, part of the overall process, but not part of the specific training stimulus. As an example, I consider self-myofascial release and soft-tissue work to be a more-or-less vital component of the training process, but i wouldn't consider rolling around on a tennis ball "training," per se (painful, maybe, but not training
).I agree with you completely and understand what you're saying if we put that aside and agree to call it "movement" (to avoid confusion) for the core daily, that is certainly true and normally beneficial. What I object to are the people that believe that you can "do crunches" everyday in an effort to develop the muscle, claiming that abs are "different" and so you can train them all day long without any detrimental effect (or something along those lines).
Sorry, G: I'll take the blame for the misunderstanding on this one
Hey, We prefer to call it an intelligent discussion over important training variables. (Um, this is what a forum is all about) :boxing_smiley:
We are indeed in agreement there.
I think that we were both at fault on this one.
I'll tell you what. This did make me look some stuff up instead of "typing off the cuff" before posting again. Good stuff.