Six Pack Abs | Kbands Live 116
Six pack abs surely look great, but there are far more health benefits of having six-pack abs than just looking good. In fact, ab workouts have a direct impact on your core muscles. Your core muscles are the sturdy link between your upper and lower body, if the link is weak, you can’t really expect much power in your limbs.
Weak or inflexible core muscles can adversely affect the movement of your arms and legs. However, a strong core enhances balance and stability; therefore, it can help prevent falls and injuries during sports or other activities. We will take you through these series of ab workouts focused on building abdominal muscles, particularly the upper abs and obliques.
Abs Workouts: Ballistic Ab Extension
The Ballistic Band overhead extensions and crunches are going to be a combination move working to failure. First, you need to get your body a little bit loose by doing crunches, which is one of the most popular ab workouts, used for strengthening and building the abdominal muscles. Attach a resistance band to a high anchor and crunch down towards the floor by extending the elbows out, engaging the abdominal muscles and contracting your abs. Slowly return to the initial position and repeat again until you have done three sets of 10 crunches.
You will notice your abs firing up a little after performing those three sets of 10 crunches but now we will move on to the overhead extension. We are going try to get down in a flat body position with our hands above our head and our elbows in front of our face. We need to be careful not to let our elbows walk up too much behind our head, or we will end up hurting our shoulders. Another key factor here is the position of our hips. If the hips are not rolled under, we are going to have a hyper extended back. It is very important to find the right level of resistance, that is, the one equal to your body weight.
So you need to find a band that offsets the amount of resistance that your body is providing on your way down. This position might be a little uncomfortable for you in the beginning but as you get used to it, you will be able to keep your hips rolled under, allowing greater activation, and keeping our spine safe. Complete 10 or 12 reps of overhead extension and then hold for 10 seconds. It will be an intense workout but push through those ten seconds and do some overhead crunch.
Ab Workouts: Ballistic Standing Rotations
This routine strengthens the core, hip flexors, hamstrings and quads, and improves the overall balance in the body. Perform this abs workout with a medium range resistance band using 2, 1 or a combination of 3 to find the right level of resistance for you. Tie the band around a post. The band should be at the same height as your elbow. Stand with your left side to the band a couple of feet away.
Grasp both handles with straight arms at chest height, and rotate your torso and shoulders toward the anchor. With your upper arm in position, your elbow should be flexed to 90 degrees with your hand reaching across the front of your torso. We are going to rotate quickly, keeping our hips engaged so that we get right level of oblique activation. During rotation, we will work out the oblique by twisting the top half and stabilizing it as we come back to the mount. 30 seconds on each side, continually moving through a total of 4 sets is all we need to wrap up this great rotation drill.
Ab Workouts: Ballistic Band Side Pull Downs Exercise
This is one of the best ab workouts for obliques. First, you need to tie your Ballistic Band low on the mount and walk away from it. Now, loop the Ballistic Band around your wrist and pull it to create some resistance. Lie down on your side and lift the bottom leg up and the top leg. The top leg is going to be your active leg, that is, the leg that will move up and down, in sync with the hand. Look at your hand position as if trying to make a muscle by pulling it away from mount.
You simply make a muscle and pull it right back up. The movement of the hand and leg is going to be coordinated, which means that both, the hand and the knee come in together at the same time. Move through 15 reps before switching to the other side. Since we are working different muscle groups, we are going to keep the pace extremely high, going back and forth, completing 6 sets on each side, always moving quickly back and forth.
Ab Workouts: Ballistic Modified Lemon Squeezer
This is one of the most intense ab workouts in this entire sequence. There are two versions - one is for the beginners while the other one is a little bit more advanced.
- Beginner’s level: As we roll out knees in toward our chest, the trick here is to roll up the hips from the ground and keep them lifted as long as the leg remains stretched out.
- Advanced level: This one is going to be a bit of an extreme version as we try to maintain a flat plank position, using our hand as lever. Lift your legs up toward the ceiling and when you get to the peak, you are not going to drop your hips on to the ground. Strive to keep your butt off the ground the entire time. As you get more advanced, you will learn to pull your leg right back up when you reach the bottom, never letting your hips touch the ground. If you have never done this exercise before, keep it short - about 6 to 8 short reps of 4 sets until you get some practice. Once you reach the advance level, try to do up to 10 sets of 15, which will make a killer ab workout.
These intense ab workouts are highly effective and will give you much more than just six pack abs. All that you need for an effective workout is a Ballistic Band and enough space so that your movements are not restricted. Whether you go to a gym or workout at home, adopt these exercises in your daily workout and be surprised with the results. If you wish to know more about the Ballistic Bands, visit our shop section. Choose a band that suits your fitness needs and be on your way to getting ripped six pack abs.