Every man wants to have the famous 6 pack abs. Every woman wants to have a tone flat stomach. The abdominal region is the sign of ultimate fitness. Many people are constantly searching for the best lower ab workouts so they can strengthen that region and get the sculpted abs they desire. There are 2 key parts to having perfect abs. First you have to have a good overall abdominal workout which includes specific lower ab workouts. The second part is probably harder, though, than just doing regular lower ab workouts. Having a good diet is a critical part of your overall health and fitness program and without it, you won’t be able to see your sculpted abs because they are covered up by layers of fat. We will discuss the foundations of a good diet then go over some specific lower ab workouts you can fit into your overall exercise program.
A good healthy diet is the most important thing you can do to uncover your sculpted abs. As I said above, your lower ab workouts won’t do anything if you have 30 lbs of fat around your midsection. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of diets out there and probably twice as many books written about them so I am not going to tell you what you need to eat to be healthy. I will give you a few pointers then you can figure out what works for you.
The first part of a healthy diet is water. You need to drink lots of water. You should drink at least 1 ounce of water for every 2 pounds of body weight. This means if you are 200 pounds, you need to drink at least 100 ounces of water. It would be even better if you would drink at least 1 ounce of water for each pound of body weight. Giving your body plenty of water allows it to flush out all the toxins and help get your system healthy. Ideally you would drink nothing but water, but if you just have to have something else, be smart about it. Try to stay away from drinks with lots of sugar in them. There is a lot of research suggesting that artificial sweeteners are even worse than sugar so don’t think just because your Diet Coke doesn’t have any sugar or any calories you can drink as much as you want. Do your best to stick with water then have a small serving if you need something else.
The second part of a healthy diet is obviously the food you eat. As I said, there are a thousand theories on what is best to eat, but every diet I have ever seen says vegetables are a good thing to eat. Even the Atkins diet has you eat low carb vegetables like lettuce. So if every diet has this in common, it is pretty easy to see that this may be the best way to go. Most diets recommend avoiding fatty and fried foods. I would recommend the same thing. Start by switching from fried foods to baked foods and eat smaller portions. Add a salad or other fresh vegetable to your meal. Don’t drench your salad in oily salad dressing or cover your vegetables with cheese sauce as that defeats the purpose of a healthy vegetable. Another trick is to drink a big glass of water before you eat to help fill you up. A healthy diet will help turbo charge your lower ab workouts on your quest to get sculpted abs.
Now that you have a little bit of a of a foundation with a healthy diet, its time to start talking about your lower ab workouts. The best thing to do is find several lower ab workouts you like doing and mix them in with a full abdominal workout and rotate them in with your other workouts. I like to work out 5 or 6 days a week. Typically, 3 days a week you should do some cardio-vascular exercise that gets your heart rate up for at least 20 minutes. These can be great days to do your upper and lower ab workouts. Pick one exercise from the lower ab workouts and pick one upper ab exercise and go them after you do your cardio. I like to do exercises to failure. When you start out, do the exercise until you can’t do any more. This will give you a great workout. As you get stronger, you can do 2 or 3 sets, but I think you get the best results by going until you can’t do any more. That way you know you got the most exercise you can. Here are a few exercises that you can use to make up your lower ab workouts.
Suspended Leg or Knee Raises
The idea of this exercise is to be suspended off the ground and raise your legs up which focuses on your lower abdominals. Many gyms have a station that kinda looks like a chair with no seat. You put your forearms on the arms and support yourself off the ground. Another common thing is arm straps that support you in the upper arm area. You can also use a pull up bar to hang from, but that requires you to have a pretty good grip. Ok, now that you are suspended in the air, you can do one of two things. The easiest is to lift your knees up towards your body. You let your legs bend when you do this. After a few reps you will feel the burn in your lower abs. As you get stronger you can go to leg raises where you keep your legs straight and raise them up until they are parallel to the floor. With your legs straight, it is harder to raise them and thus a better workout for your lower abs. Whichever way you go, I recommend doing them until you can’t do any more. This exercise is a staple in many lower ab workouts and I think it should be in every lower ab workout plan.
Leg Lifts
Another common exercise in lower ab workouts is the leg lift. For this exercise, you lay on the ground and with your legs straight. You simply raise your legs off the ground and hold. You can either hold as long as you can or have a predetermined count like 10 and after you count to 10 you lower your legs briefly then bring them back up to do another rep.
Bicycle
A variation of the leg lift is bring one knee up towards your chest at a time while the other leg is straight. You alternate which leg is straight and which knee is brought up towards your chest. As you alternate between bent leg and straight, you will see how this resembles peddling a bicycle. You can take this exercise to the next level by putting your hands behind your head and doing a rotating crunch bringing your elbow over to the opposite knee when you bring the knee towards your chest. You don’t need to touch the knee; the action of lifting up and twisting is plenty. This is another great addition to any lower ab workout.
Exercise Ball Lower Ab Workouts
If you have ever worked out on an exercise ball, you know how difficult it can be just balancing. The good news is that as you get better at balancing, the thing you are doing is strengthening you’re your core (aka abdominals). The simple act of exercising on an exercise ball is kind of like doing lower ab workouts even if you aren’t focusing on that area. You can also do ab exercises on the exercise ball. Even if you don’t plan to do lower ab workouts on an exercise ball, I would recommend getting one as it is a great workout for your abs even when you aren’t trying.
Ok, now that we have gone over a few lower abdominal exercises, you are ready to get started. You can do a little research yourself and find tons of other exercises out there that focus on the lower abs. If you are ready to take your ab workouts to the next level, I recommend you check out a program called The Truth About 6 Pack Abs. You can find out more about the best ab workout I have seen at www.AlkalizingLife.com.
Tags: Fit Tummy, fitness, exercise, diet, ab workouts
Happy New Year everyone!! I hope that you all had a great time bringing it in. I certainly did. My father in law decided to ring in the New Year with our son, so that meant that DH and I rang the New Year in as a couple. I was so much fun!! We stayed up until 2:00a.m.!! Don’t laugh. I don’t remember that last time we have done that and to top that off we slept in until 10:00am. It was so nice!
