How Often Should You Work Your Abs? (Part 2)

by Tom Venuto

The effect of "indirect" ab training Here's something else to consider: If you're doing full body weight training, you might already be working your abs more than you think. The muscles of your core and midsection contract when you're doing exercises that aren't direct ab exercises.

Front squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, pullups and rows all create a strong isometric or "bracing" contraction of your abs and core. You may even hear people say their abs were sore the day after doing heavy pushdowns (a tricep exercise) or straight arm pulldowns (a lat exercise).

It's not unheard of for someone to have great ab muscle development (visible six pack) without ever training their abs directly (with exercises like crunches, planks, etc). Their abs were getting worked indirectly during other exercises, and they also simply had low body fat levels.

The best way to see your abs is... reduce your body fat! When you see someone with great, well-defined abs, it means they've achieved low body fat, it doesn't necessarily mean their ab training routine is ideal. The ideal ab training frequency and the ideal method of fat loss are not the same thing. That brings us to the final point...

Many people with fat loss goals train their abs more often and with more volume under the misguided idea that more ab training will burn more fat off the area and you will see your abdominal definition faster. This is false.

Spot reduction is a myth. When you're in a calorie deficit, you draw fat throughout your entire body and wherever you put it on first you will tend to lose it last (F.O.L.O. = first on, last off). Ironically, abdominal fat can be the last fat to go.

Abdominal training will strengthen and condition the ab muscles but won't burn fat off the abdominal area to any significant degree. Fat is lost with caloric deficit and the number one way to achieve that is diet (stricter compliance to a calorie deficit, and consistency over time, which most people lack).
In conclusion, here are the key points to remember about ab training frequency:
1. The best practice is to train your abs like any other body part - usually 2 times per week. Try that first and if it works well, stick with it. If you want to prioritize abs and experiment, try a third workout each week and see how you respond.

2. Training abs every day is not necessary. Just because some people do it doesn't mean it's the scientifically supported best practice.

3. If you wouldn't train your chest or biceps every day, they why would you train your abs every day?

4. The number one way to see your abs is not extra ab workouts, it's losing body fat with an effective fat-burning nutrition program. You could already have a great set of abs, but if they are covered up with a layer of body fat, you're not going to see them until you diet the fat off. 

What about skipping ab training completely? After this article was originally published, I received a question from a reader who asked, "If your abs and core are worked when you do basic barbell exercises like overhead presses, front squats and so on, isn't it possible to achieve great looking abs without any direct ab training just by working really hard and heavy on those compound movements?"

I see this in a similar way as I do the argument that if you do compound barbell movements, then you don't need to train your biceps and triceps directly because your triceps get worked indirectly during presses (shoulder and chest) and your biceps are worked indirectly during pulling movements like rows and especially chin ups. That's true, but what I've discovered is that without direct training, a muscle is unlikely to get developed to the maximum. Without directly working the abs, like the arms, you're almost certainly leaving growth on the table, especially if you're not genetically gifted in one area.

If you're 100% happy with the way a body part looks, you can argue for minimalist training or there's no reason to train it at all, at least for cosmetic reasons. For example, I know people genetically gifted with ridiculous huge calves, so they simply don't work them. But also consider, especially in the case of the abs, that most people also train for strength and athletic ability or at least general fitness and function. Strong muscles that are kept in balance with the rest of the body can also help prevent injury.

It pays then to include at least a minimum of direct ab training, even if you're not a big fan of ab workouts. For whatever it's worth, I never enjoyed ab training and slacked off at multiple times in my life and that gave me an opportunity to see the difference. I was blessed with pretty good ab genetics, so when I was lean enough, my abs still looked pretty good even when I didn't work them at all. But when I trained them directly, they looked better by a large order of magnitude. I ultimately found that even only one ab workout a week helped me maintain strength in my abs as well as a good six-pack, but I don't recommend skipping abs completely.