3 abs exercises that will help you achieve chiseled abs

Abs: The holy grail of working out

The abs. I’m sure they have practical duties to perform. I’m quite certain they provide tons of functionality. Most probably we rely on them in all sorts of both obvious and less obvious ways. And I’m also sure it would be possible to list dozens of benefits linked to the possession of a strong and well-trained core. All this, however, is of subordinate interest here on PenandBarbell.com. This article will not focus on abs – this aesthetically glorious muscle group – because of its practical importance, but because of the fact that a well-chiseled washboard, in most people’s minds, is the ultimate proof of being in shape. If one is interested in the aesthetic quality of one’s physique it is hard, if not to say impossible, to give the abs anything but the outmost attention.

Everybody wants a six-pack, be it men or women, young or old, elite gym rats or the occasional gym tourist – they are all in pursuit of this holy grail of working out: the chiseled and visibly pleasing abs.

At Penandbarbell.com the ideal is to maintain chiseled and strong abs the whole year round.

There are no short-cuts to great abs

It is often said that a good six-pack is made in the kitchen. And yes, nutrition plays a major part in developing visibly satisfactory abs, this really should go without saying. If your body fat percentage is too high it won’t matter much what you do in the gym. This being said, however, I am a firm believer in the value of direct abs-work at the gym. At times it has seen fashionable to hold the opposite opinion: that great abs can be achieved through working out the rest of the body and that direct abs-work is more or less unnecessary. I do not believe so. I am convinced that the abs obey the same fundamental laws of physics as all the other muscle groups. To truly develop they need to be strained and put under pressure on a regular basis.

  Cutting down via a well-planned diet can of course go a long way in helping you make the best of what you already got, but if you want your abs to really glimmer with quality you will have to dedicate yourself to putting in a sufficient amount of direct abs work. The abs constitutes a large part of your body. When a man takes his shirt of the abs immediately, in the eyes of most spectators, becomes the predominant aspect of his physique. Yet, in spite of this, and even though this is, as already stated above, one of the most craved after and celebrated muscle groups, the amount of work that is being put in remains, for most gym-goers, relatively low, in comparison, for example, with the pecs, the arms or the shoulders. It is not hard to find guys at the gym that are willing to devote a whole session to any of those mentioned groups, but you might have to look much further if you are to find someone dedicating a full 40 minutes of intense workout to the abs.

  It is thus clear that we are looking at a contradiction between what people want and what they do. Great abs are at the top of the wishing lists, but the amount of work that is being invested most often doesn’t even come close to that which is granted to other muscle groups. The reasons for this contradiction aren´t easy to pin-down with certainty. I will speculate, though, that one explanation could be that a hard abs-workout is rather unflattering when compared to, for example, a pecs-workout. The muscles you are tormenting doesn’t actually show (unless you work out at the gym with a naked torso, which, of course, would be, in any gentleman’s mind, an unforgivable breach of etiquette). Another reason, I will argue, for the above mentioned contradiction, could be the fact that a good abs-workout actually hurts. The burn and the strain are (if you are doing it right and putting in the required amount of focus and engagement) noticeably worse than when you train any other muscle group. A good abs workout demands that you are willing to leave your comfort zone.  And for really good results you have to do this every time you work your abs, throughout every exercise and throughout every set. There really aren´t any short-cuts to great abs.

3 favorites out of many

I feel that the nutritional cutting down-aspect of good abs often get too much of the attention. The fact remains: it is muscles we are talking about. It is a muscle group that can be developed and molded and formed, just like any other muscle group. Sure, you can diet your way to visible abs, but in my opinion a truly impressive physique cannot rely solely upon a strict food regime. Trying to achieve good looking abs through dieting alone will often take its toll on the rest of the body. The Pen and Barbell ideal is much more powerful than that. We do not want to just be able to display a decent 4-pack or 6-pack – we want that washboard to pulsate with athletic ability and visible strength. We want a truly impressive core that is accompanied by sculpted shoulders, a mountain-peaked biceps and a sun-blocking V-shape. Furthermore, we want to possess these different qualities the whole year round. We do not spend our life either bulking or cutting – the chiseled abs is to be a natural and always present attribute of our physique.   

One of the most appealing aspects of training the abs is the many different exercises that are available. There is no need to ever get bored or to ever let the abs routine stagnate. There is always stuff to be done, things to be tried out. It would be easy to formulate two entirely different abs workout routines, consisting of up to 5 different exercises each, for a total of 10 different exercises, which would all have their benefits.

The following three exercises stand out as my favorites. Even though I like to vary my abs-training, these can be likened to the corner stones of my routine.

The abs, as anyone with decent powers of observation will have noticed, is a complex muscle group that consists of different parts. With these three exercises you go a long way in meeting the demands that this complexity is putting on you in terms of variety and planning.