The beautiful thing about getting a tight and toned midsection is that you do not need to devote very much time to training your abs.
You can achieve your goals with quick abdominal workouts that are performed frequently. For those that don’t want to go to the gym, you can still have a quick abdominal workout at home that is effective.
Sets, Reps, and Rest Time Of Quick Abdominal Workout
The key with abs is frequency…
The midsection is a body part that needs to be trained multiple times a week.
It recovers very quickly so quick abdominal workouts multiple times a week are key.
The ideal frequency is 4-5 times each week for optimal results.
Each workout can range from 15-20 minutes, with low rest times of no more than 30 seconds.
Structure of Quick Abdominal Workout
For optimal results, you want to include a series of quick abdominal workouts at the end of your workouts at the gym.
The equipment at the gym provides much greater flexibility with respect to exercises that can be performed. However, if you do not want to go to the gym, you can perform a series of quick abdominal workouts from home as well.
Quick abdominal workouts that can be done at the end can include the following general structure:
- Lower abs
- Upper abs
- Obliques & Transverse abdominals
Quick Abdominal Workout At The Gym
For those of you looking for a quick abdominal workout to perform at the gym, you want to begin with the lower abs as mentioned earlier.
Lower abs exercises, especially those where you are hanging from a bar, are the most challenging, and should be performed at the beginning of your quick abdominal workout while the abs are the fresh.
Some of the more effective lower abdominal exercises include hanging leg lifts and hanging oblique leg lifts. The lower abs are mostly activated when the legs are lifted up, curving the spine from the bottom up.
The goal with hanging leg lifts is to eventually get your legs all the way up as demonstrated in the image:
But getting your legs that high is very challenging so to start get them as high as you can. Slowly, with practice and as you build your abdominal strength up you will be able to get them all the way up.
The hanging oblique leg lift is a modification of the hanging leg lift but they target the obliques more as you are twisting your feet to one side each rep
When performing this exercise you want to take a wider grip for greater stability through the range of motion.
Unlike the hanging left where you bring your legs all the way up, with the hanging oblique leg lifts you do not need to bring them as high.
Bring them up to point where they are 90 degrees from the ground.
A quick abdominal workout although quick can be made very effective by including the above two hanging leg lift variations!
Also, don’t be fooled to think that because we are referring to these exercises as lower abdominal exercises that they only work the lower abs, because they definitely hit the upper and lower abs, as well as the oblique, but the emphasis is definitely on the lower abs.
If both of the hanging leg lift variations are too difficult, start with the roman chair leg lift. This exercise is very similar to the hanging leg lift exercises except that you are not hanging from a bar but you are arms and weight are supported.
It is essentially an easier version of those exercises, but still effective. The goal with this exercise is to get your knees as up high into your chest as you can and avoid going all the way down to the point where your abdominal muscles relax and you feel the tension on your hip flexors.
You want to keep constant tension on the abdominal through the range of motion.
As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to start all your quick abdominal workouts with the roman chair leg lifts even if you are able to perform the two hanging leg lift exercises.
This exercise can be performed at the start of a quick abdominal workout to gently warm up the abdominals before going to the more challenging hanging leg lift variations. Just be sure not to go until failure when performing the roman chair leg lifts so you don’t burn the abs out.
You just want to warm then up and save your energy for the more difficult hanging leg lift exercises to get the most out of your quick abdominal workout.
Summary For Quick Gym Abdominal Workout
We have begun by warming up the abdominals by performing 2-3 sets of the roman chair leg lifts for about 10-12 reps and making sure we are not reaching failure with these sets.
From here we will move onto the more challenging leg lift variation where we are hanging from a bar where we perform 3 sets of hanging leg lifts and 3 sets of oblique hanging leg lifts. Each of these sets we will be taking until failure – meaning to the point where if someone offered us a million dollars we could not do another rep!
Now that we are done with the more challenging lower ab exercises we can move onto the upper abs. For upper abs you generally want to begin with the more challenging weight bearing exercises like the cable crunch, reverse cable crunch, and weighted crunch on decline bench.
Since these exercises involve weights, they are great for toning and developing the upper abs and are much more effective than bodyweight abdominal crunches.
You want to select at least two of these upper ab exercises and be sure to include them in your quick abdominal workout performing 3 sets of each exercises and aiming for at least 15 reps. You want to aim for high reps with these exercises to fully exhaust and nicely tone the midsection.
Also, if you select a weight that you can only get 8-10 reps, chances are you will be involving other muscles, besides the abs, to help with the movement, which we want to avoid.
Now that the upper and lower abs are complete in our quick abdominal workout we can move onto the obliques, which are the muscles that line the sides of the midsection. These muscles are activated anytime we twist the torso as are performing a crunching motion.
The obliques can be targeting with weighted exercises or with body weight exercises. Weighted oblique exercises that can be included in a quick abdominal workout include cable oblique crunch and standing cable oblique twists. Body weight exercises that target the obliques and can be included in a quick abdominal workout include oblique crunches and oblique crunches on a hyperextension bench.
Generally, like the rest of the midsection, when targeting the obliques, you want to start with the weight bearing exercises like the oblique crunch and standing cable oblique twist before moving onto body weight exercises like oblique crunches.
A quick abdominal workout that can be performed at the gym, like the one described above, shouldn’t take more than 20-25 minutes, if you are following the recommended rest time of 30 second between sets.
Quick Abdominal Workout At Home
For those that don’t want to go to the gym, you can still have a quick abdominal workout at home that is effective. Although you do not get the benefit of weighted exercises, there are plenty of bodyweight exercises that effective when combined in the right order.
A quick abdominal workout performed at home will follow the same structure as that performed at the gym starting with lower abs, then moving onto upper abs, and finishing with obliques and exercises that target all areas of the abdominals.
To start, a good exercise to warm up the lower abs with is the bicycle kick. 2-3 sets of 15 reps of this exercise should be enough to warm up the abdominals, specifically the lower abs. Next, is another exercise that primarily targets the lower abs, leg lifts, and lastly knee to chest, which also targets the transverse abdominals.
Perform 3-4 sets of this exercises aiming for 15-20 reps each on set, resting 30 seconds between each set.
Once we are done isolating the abs we can move onto exercises that target the upper abs.
The main exercise for the upper abs is the classic crunch.
Perform 3 sets of 15 reps of this exercise and if it is too easy on its own, it can be supersetted with a lower ab exercise like leg lifts. Superset means performed back to back with no rest.
Now we move onto exercises that primarily target the obliques
Some exercises include bicycle, oblique crunch, and hip side to side.
Keep in mind that these exercises do not only target the obliques but they hit the rest of the abs as well!
Perform 3 sets of each of these exercises aiming for 15-20 reps per side for each exercise and remember to keep rest time low.
No more than 30 seconds between sets.
To increase the difficulty of your quick abdominal workout you can superset some of these exercises together (perform them back to back with no rest).