Make Your Ab Training Way More Functional!

<< Read Part One

Once you start to realize that most of the conventional thinking toward ab training is worthless, you can't help but dig deeper to build better workout programs. And when I found out that a simple shift in the ab exercises you choose can actually help flatten your stomach (see part one) I had to tap into my ab resource, Nick Nilsson, and find out if I could make my workouts more functional and efficient. What you're about to read is a quick interview I had with him, after asking him if doing a bunch of ab exercises on the floor really was that efficient..

Let me just start by saying there actually are a lot of effective ab exercises that can be done on the ground, but there are a lot of horrible ab exercises that are done lying on the ground too. The most effective ones are the ones done while standing, or with some sort of body movement, when you're using your abs in a truly functional fashion. And by functional I don't mean standing on a Bosu ball, on one leg, catching bean bags. That's not functional! That's entertaining, and that's a circus act, but that's not truly functional ab training.

What you want is basically working against resistance while you're in the standing position. Because, if you think about it, if you're playing sports and you want to improve your performance, you're not really going to spending much time on your back. The goal in most sports isn't to be spending most of your time lying flat on your back, so why would you want to train your abs like that? Maybe for wrestling that's a good one, but for most sports you don't want to be on your back.

Even if it's something as simple as a wood chop with a pulley, where you reach up to the right, and you pull and push down to the left, against resistance. That kind of standing movement is very applicable to sports. And is what improves your core in sports performance, and helps you gain the look, and the abs that you're looking for.

When you increase your sports performance like that, you don't really have to worry about doing the little detailed exercises. That's all going to come naturally as you develop those important core muscles. That's one of the critical things, that a lot of people miss when they do ab training. They do a lot of laying on the ground, and they do a lot of side crunches, and 100's of crunches here, pulley work while kneeling down... it's just a lot of stuff that your body doesn't truly get a lot of function out of. And I think that's one of the key things that's missing out of a lot of peoples' core training, and abdominal training.

And when you put that stuff into your training, the results will be tremendous and you'll feel the results pretty much immediately. And if you do play any sports, you're going to notice the difference on the field immediately as well. Your performance is going to improve, your strength is going to improve... and even something as simple as throwing, all that energy has to go through your legs, through your core, into your arms, and then the ball comes out. If your core is weak, you won't be able to get a proper transfer of energy from your legs, and you'll basically give up 5, 10, 15 miles per hour on a pitch. So, by functionally strengthening your core you can improve not only how your abs look, but in how your abs function and perform.

As I was hearing all this, I realized that I was wasting a lot of time with my ab training, and could be not only training my abs functionally, but also working other parts of my body at the same time. I knew functional training was the way to go, but I was still kneeling down a doing pulley exercises... it just makes sense to train how you want to perform!

If you want more tips to boost your ab training, then click through for the next part, where Nick will reveal how to save time with your ab training and really work your abs!