Picking the perfect ab workout is definitely one of the things fitness-savvy people heavily consider when creating their workout program because, honestly, who doesn’t want to get toned abs in the fastest and most effective way possible?
For instance, a popular choice of ab exercises is weight crunches. Suppose you aren’t familiar at all with weighted crunches. In that case, it is merely a type of crunch variation that comes with extra baggage—in a sense that you do the typical crunch with just a little excess weight in the form of a dumbbell; to put it simply, it is doing crunches with weights.
We’ll give you 7 helpful tips you need to know about ab exercises and weighted crunch exercises to add to your workout regimen, so keep reading to find out more!
Types of AB Exercises: What Are the Most Effective?
There are many types of AB exercise, but the most effective are the following 5 workouts.
1.Plank – It stimulates more abdominal activity than a regular crunch like you did and works the muscles in your back.
· Support yourself on your forearms and your feet’ balls, Build Bridges and keep your body in a straight line.
· Pull your abs in tight and hold for 30-60 seconds.
2. Bicycle Crunch – this is an excellent exercise for strengthening the obliques. It also engages more abdominal activity than your standard crunch.
· Lying on your back, bring your knees up to form a 90-degree angle and keep your hands by your temples.
· Crunch up and twist across the body while simultaneously performing a bicycle motion with your legs.
3. Push-Up – this traditional compound exercise is excellent for training abdominal muscles and increasing upper body strength.
· Start in a high plank with your palms flat on the floor, hands shoulder-width apart, shoulders stacked directly above your wrists, legs extended behind you, and your core and glutes engaged.
· Bend your elbows and lower your body to the floor. Drop to your knees if needed.
· Push through the palms of your hands to straighten your arms.
· Continue for 1 minute.
4. Side Plank – Side planks are right for your obliques, and it also tones your glutes, quads, hamstrings, inner/outer thighs, and upper body.
· Lie on your side with your forearm perpendicular to your body and one foot stacked over the other.
· Bridge your hip up and hold for 30-60 seconds while maintaining a straight line with your body.
5. Weighted Crunch – this primarily targets the abs and gives it an extra volume for your workouts.
· laying flat on your back and feet rested at a 90-degree angle on a bench.
· Hold a weight to your chest or extend out in front of you, then slowly elevate your shoulders off the floor while your lower back keeps you positioned.
· As soon as you feel the tension in your abs, squeeze and hold for a few seconds, release, and get back to the starting position.
· Repeat for as many reps and sets as desired.
Do We Need to Train abs Every Day?
It’s a part of any regular fitness routine to train a specific muscle group per day. That itself will constitute the entirety of a workout session. And as much as you’d like to train your core every day, there is a downside.
Remember that your core muscles stabilize your whole body; if you overwork it to a point where it can barely recover due to your continuous strain on them, then your whole body will be gravely affected as well. But this is only the case if you do core exercises throughout your entire workout session. And in your body, it would need time to recover for it to grow fully.
But all in all, training your abs can be safe if you do it in moderation. Hitting your core 2 to 3 times a week during post-workouts is more favorable, and keep in mind adding exercise variations to your workouts.
According to the research of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, Not only we focused on the definition, but also we have to care about nutrition. Most of the changes in body composition will come from your diet. , maintaining your regular diet but tossing in some abdominal work will likely not affect belly fat. Do a variety of 4 or 5 times a week to work your abs and use the rest of the time to improve your nutrition.
How Many Calories Can You Burn if You Train Your abs Every Day?
There’s typically not much room for dynamic movement when it comes to Ab exercises.
Still, suppose you want to be more specifics. In that case, an average female weighing around 140lbs could burn 70 calories in a 10-minute workout. In contrast, a Male of 185 pounds could quickly burn 86 calories at the same time.
Can Weighted Crunches Be a Belly Fat Burner?
There’s a common misconception that solely doing ab exercises will be enough to burn belly fat effectively. Despite what some people believe, Ab exercises exist to improve your core endurance and strengthen your abdominal muscles. Still, it isn’t necessarily enough to shed fat from your belly without the right amount of weight crunches.
Weighted Crunches is the best way to train your abs without adding plenty of reps as it is an Ab exercise that is bigger in volume. Now, the question is, can they be an effective way of burning fat? Like other ab exercises, it just won’t suffice or be enough to burn belly fat successfully. Though it might burn significantly more calories than the standard crunches due to the additional weight in place, the whole exercise in itself won’t have much success in removing your belly fat.
But, training your abs does have an essential role as an aid to weight loss. How? Well, studies have shown that muscle gain equates to an increase in your body’s capacity to burn fat as well. By regularly training your abs, you are doing wonders for your body when it comes to weight loss.
7 Tips You Should Know When Doing AB exercises
1. Get the right balance in your Macros.
The best way to approach doing ab exercises is by starting to clean up your diet. If you want to get abs, you should pile on the protein in your diet and lessen your carb intake to exchange healthy amounts of fat. Add more fiber into your diet for fat loss and incorporate more vegetables rich in vitamins in your diet.
2. Keep Hydrated
It’s time to get rid of drinking lots of water will only make your belly look more significant due to water weight. That’s not the case, and we need to get that mindset out of our heads. Water is valuable when it comes to weight loss. It improves overall digestion; it will help circulate the nutrients needed in our body from the food we eat to the strength we develop from exercise.
3. Watch Your Form
It’s what some people tend to overlook. Your form and posture are especially crucial when it comes to doing workouts or ab exercises. You should know which muscles to flex, where to position your arms and feet. The reason why exercise injuries happen is that some people neglect to set their bodies correctly. It’s best to start doing it correctly right off the bat to prevent it from happening.
4. Add Variation to your Workouts
Exercise variations are commonplace when it comes to constructing a workout program. It is done to prevent the muscles from plateauing that it would cease developing. To keep achieving results, you have to carefully make a workout plan to engage in different types of crunches or planks, just anything to make each set different from the other.
5. Add Cardio for Weight Loss
Suppose you are someone who is aiming for fat loss. In that case, adding cardio to your ab workout routines will be the sure way to get shed fat and, at the same time, improve your body’s overall capacity for endurance. Programs such as HIIT workouts (High-Intensity Interval Training) can be incorporated into your regimen.
6. Don’t Over-do it
It is something you should always remind yourself of whenever you do your workouts. It is commonplace when perhaps you are in the beginning stages of your training. You feel like you can do a single set 10 times over – being eager is excellent and all, but that doesn’t mean you have to be reckless with your body at the same time. Do your exercises gradually and allow your body to rest when it needs to.
7. No Pain, No Gain: Never Give Up
The 2nd most challenging thing when you’re trying to lose weight or get strength gains is that people often pull off the workout when the going gets tough. And it may get complicated; there will be days where you feel like your whole abdominal cavity is about to cave in from being sore. Still, you have to remind yourself of your goal and how all will all be worth it in the end.
Final Thoughts
Ab exercises such as weighted crunches can help build and tone your core muscles if done right. Whaterver you want to lose weight or get muscle gains, it is essential to keep your diet in check and mix-up your workout routines with a hefty cardio dose.
