Should You Work Your Abs Everyday?

Should You Work Your Abs Everyday?

You don’t need to do abs exercises to get a strong core, or even a six-pack

-Focus on compound exercises like front squats with a barbell/dumbbell, dumbbell lunges, or even polymeric push ups.

-Another option is using stabilization exercises that works not just your abs, but your balance, lower back, and even arms and shoulders.

Frequently working abs can lead to posture problems

-When you have a desk job, or sit down in a chair for a few hours, your shoulders tend to rotate forwards so that your body becomes hunched over.

-Doing crunches will make us hunch over even more by forcing our ab muscles to tighten and shorten.

-Working abs every day may only make posture problems worse.

*Stretching and foam rolling can help correct rounded shoulders and improve posture.

Abs exercises don’t remove belly fat

-The idea that you can remove stubborn body fat from one particular body part could be thebiggest myth in the fitness industry.

-Doing ab exercises will not burn any more fat off your body.

-Getting a six-pack requires achieving a low level of body fat (it is not how many crunches, or ab exercises you do).

-Your time is much better spent preparing your meals, planning your meals, or focusing on compound exercises.

Working abs every day is inefficient

-Let’s say you spend 10-20 minutes every day doing ab exercises. You could have spent that time doing high intensity interval training, stretching, foam rolling, and a lot of other activities that would likely be A LOT more beneficial to your body.

Working abs every day can lead to muscle imbalances

-Not only can working out abs every day lead to postural problems, but also muscle imbalances. Your abs complex, which is all your ab muscles are comprised of the rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, internal obliques, and external obliques. If you do standard crunches 7 days a week for 300 reps, your rectus abdominus muscle (the six-pack muscle) is likely to get trained much more intensely than the other abs muscles.

-If you do get your rectus abdominus too strong relative to your other abs and lower back muscles, you may be more susceptible to injury.

Stay Fit. Stay Classy. Stay True

Jenna

References:
http://www.builtlean.com/2012/03/09/abs-everyday/