How to Build Abdominals

Video Transcript

"Hi Bob Mathews with Power 1 K Body Shaping Program and I'm here. I'm going to show you how to build abdominals. Before we get into what I think is probably the best exercise you can do on an ongoing basis that is not really complicated I think there is a few things we need to cover first. To get abs if it was as simple as just doing some crunches or thousands of crunches that you hear on the TV and so forth I think you would go around the pool or at the beach and you would see a lot more nice looking waist lines and we know that's not true. Why? Because it is about the diet. So if you are trying to get abs, before we get to the exercises, you've got to keep in mind that abs are good. They're awesome, they're good to do, they're part of the whole body, they're part of the core, strengthening the lower back. But ultimately if you really want abs you are going to have to get your body fat down way way low. I'm thinking for a girl around 17% and for a guy probably lower than 12. So if you are at 30% and you're thinking that I'm going to go buy this ab machine or I'm going to prescribe to this killer ab monster workout or whatever they call these things, well then probably you are not going to get the results you were looking for. Another key point is the ab is one total wall. You can't really use one, say the lower ab without using the other, the upper ab so to say I'm just going to sit there and work on my lower abs is almost impossible. You can put additional stress on the lower but you can't really work the lower so first things. You've got the diet, very important. Second part of the thing is it all works as one so you don't have to get as complicated as you might have thought nor do you have to start breaking up your workout to try to isolate different areas of your abs, spending a lot of time that is not worth it. I have one exercise that I think you should do and it's called bicycle crunches. They're really simple. You've probably already done them and maybe even heard of them before. What they do is just like this and I would do 20 per side and then I would rest and I'd probably do that around 3 times. Another thing to keep in mind once you have exhausted the oxygen out of the abdominal area you are really maybe burning some calories but you are not working your abs any more so the whole thought of 1,000 repetitions on crunches is really a fallacy so I would start with maybe 20 or 30 on each side, 3 rounds and we'll see how you end up. Good luck and we'll see you on line."