I think everybody will agree to a fact that the one, who has six-pack-ABS, is in great shape and a well-trained athlete. ABS are placed right in the visual center of our body, connecting upper and lower parts. So, if you have great hands and a massive torso, but the ordinary belly, you probably won’t catch jealous and admiring looks.
It is not a surprise that ABS have got so much attention. However, I think the one who has just started his way in street workout from our 100DW program is not ready to have six packs. Nevertheless, we will discuss it before the advanced block.
Core muscles
The core is traditionally assumed to originate most of the full-body functional movements, including most sports. In addition, the core determines, to a larger extent, a person's posture. Basically, the human anatomy is built to take force upon the bones and direct autonomic force, through various joints, in the desired direction. The core muscles align the spine, ribs, and pelvis of a person to resist a specific force, whether static or dynamic.
Major muscles include the pelvic floor muscles, transversus abdominis, multifidus, internal and external obliques, rectus abdominis, erector spinae (sacrospinalis) especially the longissimus thoracis, and the diaphragm. Minor core muscles include thelatissimus dorsi, gluteus maximus, and trapezius.We need to say that these muscles play great role while doing all 4 exercises of our program.
That’s why we recommended paying attention to the right, smooth technique.
So, the core muscles allow you to stabilize your body and keep balance. It is hard to see how they work, but easy to feel. You can do a little experiment. First, do a couple of push-ups on the floor. Then try to do push-ups with your hands on the ball. Then try to climb on some sort of the narrow bar and do push-ups there, holding your arms and legs in one line. Did you feel the difference? That’s why some training programs and different sports include exercises on unstable surfaces. This way you activate many muscles to stabilize your body.
Also remember the fact that core muscles are often the first to give up when you do exercises (for example, lowering your pelvis in push-ups). That twists your technique, and the wrong technique of exercises is the short way to a trauma. I think it is obvious that advanced, complex elements we borrowed from gymnastics won’t do without strong well-trained core muscles. So, pay proper attention to these muscles.
There are 2 simple ways to strengthen core muscles:
1) While doing our basics exercises focus on tension in these muscles (I have mentioned this before). Your torso must be straight, belly – tight. Head – looking affront.
2) Add some instability in your exercises (when you reached proper level). For example we have mentioned pushups on a fit ball or plyometric push-ups.
ABS
Speaking about ABS, I want to notice the following:
Novices: As I said before, if you just started you training and 100DW is your starting point, you don’t need to do isolating exercises to your ABS (like crunches). Because ABS do their part of the work in all our basic exercises, they will have optimum load.
Nutrition: You can see in numerous articles, magazines and the internet that: “ you should work on your ABS in the kitchen, not in the gym” and “everybody’s got six-pack, but it is hidden under fat”. All this low-fat nutrition protocols are great stuff, but if you don’t work with your ABS, you won’t have a great result.
ABS are muscles and like every muscle they have a definite size. If you eat well, but won’t do physical training, you will have a plane belly. If you want to have prominent six pack ABS, you need to train it.
Training: There are a lot of different videos how to train your ABS, but speaking friendly, a lot of them are garbage. Especially, think twice about effectiveness, if someone in the video doesn’t have his own ABS or surely takes steroids. Nevertheless, there are 5 videos that have proved their effectiveness and I know a lot of people personally, who built great ABS thanks to these routines.
#1 Sergey Spiridonov ABS workout routine
#2 Ilya Gorodnichev
#3 Valentin Novikov
#4 P4P ABS level 1
#5 Jamie Alderton 8 min ABS
These 5 videos have been proved by results of many people. I use them myself changing from time to time that’s why I recommend them.
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