People seem to love talking about GROWING muscle for every group in the body, apart from one…

The abs.

When it comes to ab training, people completely lose their minds.

We do stuff like…

• Sets of a thousand crunches

• Twisting motions in random directions (often not directly loaded)

• Holding planks for as long as possible

• Hip flexor/trapeze swings hanging off a bar

• Often never to muscle failure or close to it

Perhaps we’ve come to these kinds of strategies as an industry because we DON’T want our abs to grow…

But much like any other muscle group, when we see growth, we usually look more like we want to.

People often think growing abs will make them look bulky and not cut, but I’ve never seen anyone with a 6-pack and shredded obliques that wasn’t completely happy about it.

When it comes to other muscle groups, we tend to be more sensible. We focus on what should be priorities…

• Stable motions specific to muscle group

• Use reps within 8-20 range

• Work through large range of motion for complete contraction

• Train at or close to failure

If we want to train our abs, we should apply the same principles (above), because the abs are not special snowflakes. They are muscles, just like all the rest, which respond best to direct loading with stable exercises that we can easily progress.

Anatomy

Our major players in ab training are the rectus abdominis (6-pack) and the obliques (internal and external):

The function of the rectus abs is mainly to bend the trunk forwards (like a crunch). The function of the obliques is mainly to rotate and side-bend the trunk in a variety of directions.

Knowing these functions is essential to training the abs.

Many people end up doing “hip flexor” exercises by swinging the legs around without the understanding that the abs do not move the legs directly - they only move the spine, pelvis, and ribcage.

Training

Training the 6-pack is fairly straightforward, and I like to do with with stable crunching motions, like this:

If you sense that the above variant is at all unstable, you can simply turn around and use the thigh pads for anchoring like you’re doing a lat pull-down.

Training the obliques can sometimes be a bit trickier to setup, but fundamentally the principles of stability and loading remain the same as in training the six pack.

Here’s a side-bending variation that I love for training the obliques, done with a similar lat pull-down setup:

Here’s another side-bending variation you can do for the obliques on a 45º hyperextension:

And here’s a variation you can do to train the obliques (primarily) and the rectus (secondarily) with a rotation variation:

There are numerous ways to train the different abs, but the variations above provide a clear roadmap for what a good starting point might be.

Regardless of the scenario, make sure you’re checking the following boxes:

• The hips/legs are stable and aren’t moving all over the place (at least, during crunching variations…you can also do exercises like hanging leg raises, but these variations are far more advanced and difficult to setup appropriately)

• You can easily load the trunk via simple methods like using a 45º hyperextension bench or hold onto cables (I recommend straps if grip is an issue)

• You can progressively add more load to the exercises over time without sacrificing stability

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