Joel Younkins

Training your abdominal muscles are extremely important to having a strong and healthy body. The only structure that you’re relying on to connect and support your upper body and lower body is your spine. Your abdominal muscles play a huge part of stabilizing your spine. Abdominal muscles respond really well to endurance style of training. You don’t need to get real intense by loading up a bunch of weight or performing extreme circus looking movements to train your abs. You DO NOT need to add a balance component to your abdominal exercises; stable surface training is way more effective. So yes, basic movements will work just fine. You may not get as many Instagram Likes with these exercises, but this will be way more effective in real life!

These exercises that I’m going to show you below, are some of the same ones that I have used over and over with myself and hundreds of my clients that have worked extremely well over the years. Because your abs respond well to endurance, you want to train them often, that’s why this routine, we will be doing it 3 days a week. You can perform ab training up to 4-5 days a week when you build up to it, but for now, 8 weeks of 3x/week workouts will work really well for you!

​Lets be clear about one thing however, the days of training your abs to see your abs are over. Everyone now knows that doing a million crunches won’t directly get your abs to show. Yes, they can help enhance them, but you need to get lean through diet and exercise to be able to shed the body fat to show them. Also remember, training your ab muscles doesn’t directly burn the stomach fat.

Now that we got that out of the way, let me show you an 8 Week Ab Training Program that you can implement in to your training this week! No matter what your goals are right now, this program will be a huge benefit to your physical development if you’re not consistently following something that looks a lot like this. You will feel stronger, have less (low) back pain, and have a tighter feeling around your mid section. Whether your are an elite athlete or the average gym goer, you need to be training your ab muscles regularly! 

​Good luck!

 < FREE Ab Training routine >

Month 1

Day 1
Week 1
  1. Front Planks: 2 x 2                (15 sec hold)
  2. V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Straight Leg raise: 2 x 8
Week 2
  1. Front Planks: 2 x 3                (15 sec hold)
  2. V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 10e 
  3. Straight Leg raise: 2 x 10
Week 3
  1. Front Planks: 2 x 4               (15 sec hold)
  2. V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 12e 
  3. Straight Leg raise: 2 x 12
Week 4
  1. Front Planks: 2 x 2               (15 sec hold)
  2. V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Straight Leg raise: 2 x 8

Day 2

Week 1
  1. Side Planks: 2 x 2e               (15 sec hold)
  2. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 8e
Week 2
  1. Side Planks: 2 x 3e               (15 sec hold)
  2. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 10e 
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 10e
​Week 3
  1. Side Planks: 2 x 4e               (15 sec hold)
  2. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 12e 
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 12e
Week 4
  1. Side Planks: 2 x 2e               (15 sec hold)
  2. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 8e

Day 3

Week 1
  1. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  2. ​​V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Hollow Man: 2 x 8                  (3 sec hold)
​Week 2
  1. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 10e 
  2. ​​V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 10e 
  3. Hollow Man: 2 x 10                (3 sec hold)
​Week 3
  1. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 12e 
  2. ​​V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 12e
  3. Hollow Man: 2 x 12                (3 sec hold)
Week 4
  1. McGill Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  2. ​​V Pos Sit Ups: 2 x 8e 
  3. Hollow Man: 2 x 8                  (3 sec hold)

Month 2

Day 1

Week 1
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 2  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. Eagle Sit Ups: 2 x 8e           BW-25lbs
  3. Ab Twist: 2 x 15e                  BW-25lbs
Week 2
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 3  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. Eagle Sit Ups: 2 x 10e           BW-25lbs
  3. Ab Twist: 2 x 18e                  BW-25lbs
Week 3
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 4  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. Eagle Sit Ups: 2 x 12e           BW-25lbs
  3. Ab Twist: 2 x 20e                  BW-25lbs
Week 4
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 2  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. Eagle Sit Ups: 2 x 8e           BW-25lbs
  3. Ab Twist: 2 x 15e                  BW-25lbs

Day 2

Week 1
  1. Side Hip Ups: 2 x 8e               
  2. Crunches: 2 x 15                  BW-25lbs
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 8e                    (3 sec hold)
Week 2
  1. Side Hip Ups: 2 x 10e               
  2. Crunches: 2 x 18                  BW-25lbs
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 10e                    (3 sec hold)
Week 3
  1. Side Hip Ups: 2 x 12e               
  2. Crunches: 2 x 20                  BW-25lbs
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 12e                    (3 sec hold)
Week 4
  1. Side Hip Ups: 2 x 8e               
  2. Crunches: 2 x 15                  BW-25lbs
  3. Bird Dogs: 2 x 8e                    (3 sec hold)

Day 3

Week 1
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 2  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. DB Side Bends: 2 x 8e 
  3. Clam Crunches: 2 x 8             (3 sec hold)
​Week 2
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 3  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. DB Side Bends: 2 x 10e 
  3. Clam Crunches: 2 x 10             (3 sec hold)
​Week 3
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 4  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. DB Side Bends: 2 x 12e 
  3. Clam Crunches: 2 x 12            (3 sec hold)
Week 4
  1. Loaded Front Planks: 2 x 2  (15 sec hold) 15-25lbs
  2. DB Side Bends: 2 x 8e 
  3. Clam Crunches: 2 x 8             (3 sec hold)

Prepare for success