How Often Should You Exercise Your Abs?

December 15, 2010 By 7 Comments

Frequency of ab workouts is one of the great fitness debates. There are basically two schools of thought.

One school of thought argues that abs should be exercised everyday. Because our abs are stabilizer muscles, we’re always using them – whether it’s walking down the street, getting out of a car or sitting in a chair. And since our abs are accustomed to this heavy workload, we can train our abs more frequently than we would other muscles.

The other school of thought argues that it’s important to give our abs a day or two to recover. Because ours abs are not fundamentally different than other muscles, we need to let them rebuild and repair – or else we’re limiting our progress and set ourselves up for injury.

I take the middle-ground. I don’t think ab workouts are so much about frequency as intensity. If your ab workout is intense, and if it leaves your muscles feeling sore – then give your abs rest. Never exercise a muscle that is still sore from a previous workout.

Furthermore, for my own workouts, I’ve broken my abs into three parts: obliques (side abs), lower abs, and middle abs/upper abs. One each day, I focus on a different part. If I do my obliques today, I’ll do my lower abs tomorrow – and so on. And if I am sore from a previous ab workout, then I give myself a day of recovery.

How often do you exercise your abs? Let us know in the comments below.

P.S. If you dare, you should try out my 5-minute ab workout!

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Six Pack Secret: Drinking Water?

December 8, 2010 By 6 Comments

The world's most famous six pack!

Since elementary school, our phys ed teachers have reminded us to drink our 8 cups of water a day. But why? It turns out they were on to something. Staying hydrated is associated with a number of benefits – including better definition in your abs.

Decreased risk of cancer, clearer skin and increased productivity are a few of the reasons to stay hydrated. But water also has another important benefit: Fat loss. Water curbs hunger (the body often sends a hunger signal when it’s actually thirsty), replaces sugary drinks and actually boosts your metabolism.

The findings of a water/metabolism study were reported in the The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The researchers tracked energy expenditures among seven men and seven women who were healthy and not overweight. The subjects, after drinking approximately 17 ounces of water, increased the rate of burning calories by 30% within the time frame of 30-40 minutes. Drinking water helps create the create the calorie deficit required for weight and fat loss. And less fat = more defined six pack.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. In the December/January issue of Men’s Fitness, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino (famous for his abs) touts water as one of his top 8 six-pack rules.

Remember: Even a small layer of belly fat will obscure abs. So… exercise, maintain a clean diet – and drink tons of water. Cheers!

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about crazy abs, check out my “how to get a six pack” guide.

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How to Get Lower/Bottom Abs.

November 28, 2010 By 8 Comments

The human body is beautiful in all its shapes and forms, but there is something especially sexy about a well formed six pack. As it turns out, the bottom half of the six pack is the hardest part to get. So, here are some tips for developing your lower/bottom abs.

Lose the fat

The lower abdomen is where men tend to store fat hormonally. And it’s the last place that we lose it. This fat is incredibly stubborn – and even if your ab muscles are strong, even a small amount of fat will keep them hidden from view. To develop a leaner midsection:

  1. Strength train. Strength training is the best kept fat loss secret. When you strength train, you build muscle. And muscle incinerates calories – often causing a calorie deficit (more calories out than in) that helps people increase definition.
  2. Eat like a caveman. A healthy diet is key. Exercise is important, but don’t forget that nutrition is the other side of that equation. Lean meats, vegetables, nuts, berries, etc. should take center-stage in your diet. For more information about diet and eating like a caveman, check out my Eating for Fitness program.
  3. Interval train. Interval training is incredibly effective at helping people lose weight. It boosts the metabolism for hours and is several times more effective than running at a constant pace. Learn how to do it.

Increase the muscle

99% of unveiling your lower/bottom six pack is shedding the extra fat. But when the fat is gone, you’ll probably want your abs to pop. To that end, make sure you’re doing ab exercises that target that lower area. Exercises like leg lifts, weighted leg lifts and hanging leg raises will do wonders.

Here’s how to do a leg lift:

  1. Lie on your back on the floor.
  2. Extend your legs straight out and keep your arms at your side.
  3. Folding at the pelvis and keeping both legs together, lift your legs off of the floor.
  4. Lift your legs until they are perpendicular to the floor.
  5. Hold, then slowly lower.
  6. Repeat.

Enjoy – let me know if you have any questions in the comments below! And remember to honor your body wherever it’s at. Six pack or not, you’re beautiful. :-)

Also – Check out my amazingly cute and body-positive Good Vibes Gym Bag. It just launched today – supplies are limited and I’m offering special savings!

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Great Leg & Oblique Exercise: Golf Squats! [Video]

November 26, 2010 By 7 Comments

Variety isn’t just the spice of life – it’s a powerful ingredient in any fruitful workout program. From time to time, it’s a good idea to change things up.

Golf squats are a powerful leg and oblique exercise that you’ve probably never heard of or seen at the gym. Which means it’s a good idea to try ‘em out and consider incorporating them into your routine.

I put together a short video demonstration. Click below to check it out:

Filed Under: Abs, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

Ankle Weights Review

November 23, 2010 By 5 Comments

Is it wrong to be best friends with a piece of fitness equipment? If that’s the case, I don’t want to be right. I love my ankle weights.

Ankle weights are just exactly what they sound like: weights that are strapped around your ankles. They generally are variable – you can take out packets of sand (in increments of 2lbs) to make the weights lighter. I ordered a set of 20 lbs ankle weights, which works out to 10 lbs for each ankle.

Ankle weights were developed for cardiovascular exercise – to help walkers and runners build up endurance. If you attach a set of weights to your legs, you’ll discover that you need to work harder to complete the same motion. It’s quite the workout, though it’s not advised for people with knee or joint issues since it adds extra pressure.

As a side note, you can also slap them on while cleaning house or doing errands – they can make a mini workout feel like a mega workout.

At any rate, I have little interest in using ankle weights for my cardio. I do, however, have great interest in incorporate ankle weights into my ab workout. And today, I did just that.

Ankle weights don’t make a difference in every ab exercise, but if you use them while doing leg lifts, reverse crunches, scissor kicks, double crunches and just about anything else that involves lifting or moving your feet, you’ll notice a huge difference. Hard exercises become nearly impossible (depending on the weight that you use) – which is super important when it comes to progression. People have a tendency not to train their abs progressively, and ankle weights help thwart that.

So, if you have any interest in upping the ante of your ab workout, get creative and introduce some ankle weights. I think you’ll be glad you did.

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Why Your Ab Workout Isn’t Working: 5 Fixes.

October 9, 2010 By 10 Comments

You’ve been doing crunches like it’s your job, but you’re not seeing muscle growth. You’ve been eating healthy, staying super lean and doing lots of cardio – and still, your abs don’t pop like Mario Lopez’s.

So, what are you doing wrong?

One of the biggest mistakes that people make in their ab workouts is a lack of progression. Think about the first time that you bench pressed or did a weighted squat. Over time, you increased the weight – you made it harder – and your muscles responded by developing. The same exact thing happens with your abs, but so many of us are stuck in crunch-ruts and routines that we’ve been performing for years.

If you do more of the same, you’ll get more of the same.

In order to truly build stronger and more developed abs that pop, you’ve got to increase the intensity of your ab workout over time. Here are few ways that you can add progression to your ab workout:

  1. Increase the number of reps. If you normally do 10 of a given ab exercise, bump it up to 15.
  2. Increase the angle. If you do crunches on a decline bench, make the angle of the decline sharper.
  3. Decrease resting time between sets. Normally rest for 45 seconds? Try 30.
  4. Increase the resistance. Incorporate increasingly difficult resistance bands into your exercise, or do crunches with heavier and heavier weight plates. If you use an ab machine, up the ante over time.
  5. Hold the contraction for a few seconds. When you’re fully crunched, hold it for two or three seconds – then release.

In terms of progression, your abs are no different than the rest of your muscles. You need to increase the intensity of your workout consistently and constantly over time in order the more fully develop those muscles.

Questions? Let me know in the comments below.

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Bust Your Ass (and Belly) with Interval Training!

September 24, 2010 By 28 Comments

Running his way into my heart.

One of my favorite training techniques is interval training. I love interval training because it burns 30% more calories than exercising at one pace and it boosts your metabolism like none other – for up to 12 hours after exercise. It’s great for losing weight, toning, definition (hello, six pack), injury prevention, burn-out reduction and performance.

Want to give it a shot? Set aside 40 minutes and grab a sweat towel:

  1. Warm up with five minutes of low-intensity jogging.
  2. Stop and stretch for a good three minutes. Stretching will improve your performance and reduce the risk of injury.
  3. Start cycle 1: Pick up your pace to a medium-intensity speed and hold it for three minutes. This is a pace that you’d be able to maintain for the entire workout.
  4. No, go full out. Run hard for 1 minute. Really burn yourself out at a speed that pushes you to your limits. After the one minute, drop back down to your medium-intensity speed.
  5. Each subsequent cycle will follow this same pattern. 3 minutes of aerobic/recovery and 1 minute of anaerobic/sprinting. Do four more cycles (five cycles in total).
  6. Cool down with five minutes of low-intensity jogging.
  7. Stretch again.

I usually do my interval training (and running, in general) on a treadmill; it’s easier to set a speed and monitor the time. But, you can certainly perform interval training outside with the help of a watch or stopwatch.

Running not your thing? Try this same program on a bicycle. Or, modify it slightly to try in the pool (2 laps recover, 1 lap sprinting).

And, feel free to change the numbers. You may want to shorten recover time or do more cycles. Make it your own and have fun with it. It will kick your ass, but the results speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Abs, Tips, Weight Loss Tips Tagged With: , , , ,

5-Minute Oblique Workout! [Video]

September 22, 2010 By 7 Comments

Back in July, I shared a 5-minute killer ab workout that you can do at home. Today, I’m excited to share a 5-minute ab workout that focuses on your obliques. Your obliques are the muscles that run alongside your abs – and many people forget to exercise them.

You can try my full 30-minute ab workout as part of my Total Body Assault fitness program. Use promo code “abs” to save $10 at checkout!

Watch the video below:

Filed Under: Abs, YouTube Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Get a Six Pack: Are Crunches Enough?

September 17, 2010 By 13 Comments

Sexy? Yes. Worth the effort? You tell me.

Wisdom aside, many people first start working out because they want the almighty six pack. Of course, it’s my hope that these exercisers eventually come to appreciate the much more powerful and transformative benefits of working out, but there’s new denying the ubiquity of the six pack.

In fact, more than 40,000,000 web pages (now 40,000,001) are dedicated to the subject. So what’s the secret to abs of steel? And are crunches enough to carve out a washboard midsection?

The simple answer is it depends.

In terms of effectiveness, crunches and sit-ups are at the top of the list. Researches from Slippery Rock University put many popular ab products to the test and found that we need not waste our money on fancy equipment to activate our abdominal muscles (check out my equipment-free 5-minute ab workout on YouTube). Researches wrote:

For the 8 exercises examined in this study, the Ab-Sling, Ab-Rocket, crunch, and sit-up produced the most muscle activation in URA and LRA, but because participants would neither purchase nor use the Ab-Sling or Ab-Rocket, the sit-up or crunch should be prescribed for rectus abdominis exercise.

That’s good news for our wallets. But are crunches really a magic bullet if you’re going after the superficial Jersey Shore six pack? If you’re naturally very lean, then yes – you can stop right here. But for the rest of us, no.

Here’s the real secret: A powerful workout that incinerates any body fat hiding your abs and a smart but lower (not crazy low) carbohydrate diet.

The good news is that you may already have a six pack. The bad news is that it’s probably comfortably hidden under a layer of body fat. Even a small and healthy layer of body fat will do a good job to hide your abdominal muscles from view. But if a six pack is really your goal and focus (spending that same energy elsewhere may be more rewarding), then you’ll have to step up the cardio and really monitor your eating. Goodbye pizza and pasta and hello up-hill sprinting and intervals!

Sure, they’re sexy. But do you think it’s worth the energy and effort to carve out a six pack? Let me know in the comments below.

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Download Davey Wavey Workout Videos – Win an iPod Touch!

September 7, 2010 By 6 Comments

Today, Davey Wavey Fitness (yes, this very blog that you are reading) hit an important milestone: 100,000 blog posts read! That’s no small feat, especially considering it has been just over four weeks since its launch in early August.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m giving away a free iPod touch (yes, the one pictured here) to one of the next 100 people to download any Davey Wavey Fitness program before midnight on Monday, September 13. All you have to do is download any of my fitness programs to be automatically entered for the 8GB iPod Touch pictured to the right.

Download any one of the following:

  1. Total Body Assault. This program includes more than 160 minutes of muscle-shredding workout videos, including my famous 30-Minute ab workout, an e-book, a fitness journal and a whole slew of free bonuses. Learn more and watch a free preview or download now.
  2. Underwear Yoga. You’re invited to strip down to your skivvies with me for two 20-minute muscle building and energy boosting yoga flows. This is not your mother’s yoga class. Comes with 2 e-books, a guided meditation, soundtrack and more! Learn more and watch a free preview or download now.
  3. Eating for Fitness. Learn how to conquer nutrition, build muscle and fight fat using extensive expert guidance. Learn more or download now.

Or, download all three programs (that’s over 200 minutes of video footage and tons of support materials) with one click and save 25%. Plus, in addition, if you download all three, you’ll get 5 chances to win the iPod touch instead of 3 if you purchased the programs separately.

Thank you for helping make this blog such a great success!

Filed Under: Abs, Arms, Back, Biceps, Cardio, Chest, Forearms, Legs, Nutrition, Shoulders, Tips, Triceps, Weight Loss Tips Tagged With: ,
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