The BEST 10 Minute Ab Workout For Six Pack Abs (HIT EACH AREA!)

Lets face it, acquiring a sculpted set of six pack abs is a goal that most of us want to achieve. Most of us also know that in order to achieve this, we need to strip off the excess fat that's covering our abs by focusing on our diet. And you'll have to do this until you get down to at least around 10 to 12% body fat for men and around 14 to 18% for women. But with that being said, achieving well developed abs and an impressive looking midsection goes beyond this. Because although your diet will be mainly responsible for revealing your abs in the first place, place your training will then be responsible for how developed and how well your abs and overall midsection look once they're finally revealed. Meaning that adding in direct abs and core work into your routine is definitely needed if you'd like to improve their development. But in order to best do this, you need to first understand the basic anatomy of the core muscles as they each play a vital role in contributing to the overall look of your midsection. First off, there's the rectus abdominis, which is the muscle group that most people associate with the coveted six pack. The rectus abdominis can be further divided into two regions, the upper and the lower abs. And research has shown that each of these two regions can be selectively activated given that they're innervated by different nerves, which, as you'll see, will be accounted for when we get to our workout. Next, there's the obliques, which run down the sides of the abs and not only adds definition to your midsection, but but can also help visually taper and narrow down your waistline. And then lastly, there's a serratus anterior situated right on top of the ribs, which again adds more definition to your midsection as well as plays a vital role in your shoulder health and injury prevention. So, as you can see, each of these muscles play a significant role in sculpting out an impressive midsection. Meaning that your abs routine needs to be designed in a way that hits each of these various muscles. But this is something that most people fail to do with their ab workout simply because of the overwhelming, overwhelming number of core exercises out there. Which makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly which ones you should be focusing your time and effort on and which ones will speed up your core development most effectively. In this video though, that's exactly what I'll show you how to do by crafting the optimal abs workout for you based on both scientific research and our anatomical understanding of the core muscles. So the first exercise we're going to perform is a reverse crunch, which is something categorized as a bottoms up abs exercise since the hips are brought up towards your shoulders as a result effectively favors the lower abs over the upper abs in terms of activation. Now, the reason for starting out with this movement first in the workout is simply because bottom up abs exercises are typically the most taxing to perform when compared to other abs exercises. And given that the lower abs are the region of the abdominals that most people struggle with, not only losing fat from, but also with developing will prioritize them by working them first in the workout when they're fresh. However, as I've stated in the past, the key to this exercise's effectiveness completely depends on how you perform it. Illustrating this is an EMG analysis that found that subjects who performed the reverse crunch with the commonly done incorrect form where the legs were simply swung up and down were unable to elicit much lower ABS activation. Whereas subjects who performed the reverse crunch with the correct form that I'm about to show you, we're now able to elicit significantly greater lower ABS activation. So instead of doing this, what you want to do is before you even start, initiate something called posterior pelvic tilt by squeezing your glutes and contracting your abs so that your pelvis tilts upwards and your back flattens onto the bench. This is going to pre activate your lower abs and will help keep them activated during each rep. Then when you perform a rep, all I want you to think about is curling your pelvis up towards your belly button and think about could contract in your lower abs and you should feel a very strong contraction in the lower abs as a result of this. I'd recommend building up this movement to roughly two to three sets of 15 to 20 reps, done with body weight and full control and then move on to performing them weighted and or with a decline implemented like so for two to three sets of 10 to 15 reps. And this is crucial that you do since just like any other muscle, like your biceps for example, you want to overload your abs with more weight over time in order to best develop and stimulate their growth. Next we'll move on to a rotational movement high to low woodchoppers to now shift our focus onto the all important obliques. These are a great option to include in your core workout since they enable us to apply a weighted resistance that's directly in line with the diagonal way that the oblique fibers run. And for these you want to avoid simply swinging the weight down with your arms. Instead keep your arms extended and Elbows locked and then use the one side of your obliques to rotate your torso down and across your body towards the opposite kn. I'd recommend a set and rep range of roughly 23 sets of 1015 reps and then adding more weight as this becomes easier. However, if you find difficulty with this movement, then a viable alternative are bicycle crunches, which have been shown by the American Council of Exercise to elicit quite high activation of the obliques when compared to other common obliques exercises. For these though, you want to implement a higher rep range of roughly 20 to 30 reps or simply perform them in failure since you'll be working just with your body weight here. Next, it's time to move on to weighted crunches, which are a top down abs movement that we know will now enable us to selectively emphasize the upper abs over the lower abs which were already worked earlier. Now there are a variety of weighted crunches that you can do here, such as the stability ball crunch or weighted cable crunch, which are both effective at targeting the upper abs. But the key is that you're emphasizing the top down aspect of these movements by focusing on simply bringing the rib cage down and forward towards your pelvis. Your hips should simply remain stationary as you perform each rep, which will just enable your abs to be taken through their full range of motion. And for these, you want to use a moderate rep range of 23 sets of 1015 reps and again gradually overload these with more weight as your abs develop and strengthen over time. The last exercise of this abs workout will be something called serratus jabs, which we know based on EMG analyses elicits very high activity at the serratus anterior since it effectively applies both of its main movement functions, protraction and upward rotation of the scapula. You can use a band or cable and set it up such that your arm travels upwards during the jab. Then you simply want to perform an upward punching motion and reach as far as you can at the end position in order to fully protract that scapula and activate the serratus anterior to the greatest degree. I will again use a rep range of 1015 reps per set for these and overload it over time by increasing the resistance. So to wrap this workout for you, here's how you'd want to construct it. I'd recommend performing this workout one to three times per week, which can either quickly be done after your main workouts or on your rest days. And just for your convenience, I've compiled all of this information into an easy to use completely free mobile friendly PDF for you to download and use for reference while you're at the gym performing this as workout. It's going to show you the full workout, the rest times, step by step tutorials for each exercise and more. And to get a copy of it, just simply head over to builtwithscience.com absworkoutpdf and I'll send it right over to you. And I'll leave a link to that in the description box down below as well. Now keep in mind though guys that this abs workout is just one piece of the puzzle. If you truly want to attain a shredded, well defined set of six pack abs, then you need to pair your workouts with a nutrition plan that helps you both shred off fat effortlessly while providing your muscles with the fuel that they need to recover and grow to the best of their ability after each workout. And for a step by step program that takes care of all the guesswork for you and shows you exactly how to train and what to eat week after week in order to lean down most effectively with science. Just like several other members have been able to do with their built with science programs. Then simply head on over to builtwithscience.com to take the analysis quiz to discover which science based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at. Anyways guys, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to show your support by giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next, subscribing to the channel and turning on notifications for the channel as well as this all really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone. I really do appreciate it. I'll see you next time.