ab training theories

[chromo56]

Im 16 and a serious lifter for 2 years. My trainer at my school says you can do abs everyday but every other mucles rule of thumb is once a week. He says do 1 set of abs everyday untill failure. I do an abworkout that lasts about 15-20 minutes and is hard and im sore for 1-3 days after. It consists of 2 sets of 60 crunches, 2 sets of 30 per side of somach i think its called obliches, bikes, and 2 - 1 minute bridges.

Im a sprinter in track so abs are very important in running. Now how many times a week should i do ab excersises?

And does the once a week training per muscle apply to all ages?

[Megiddo]

There are a lot of theories to ab training. Some people train every day, some every other day, so on and so forth. From what I have read, abs, like calves are very hard to overtrain. I train abs EOD and I vary the exercise each training session.

Not much help but hopefully enough to get you going.

[Stonecold54]

Originally Posted by chromo56

Im 16 and a serious lifter for 2 years. My trainer at my school says you can do abs everyday but every other mucles rule of thumb is once a week. He says do 1 set of abs everyday untill failure. I do an abworkout that lasts about 15-20 minutes and is hard and im sore for 1-3 days after. It consists of 2 sets of 60 crunches, 2 sets of 30 per side of somach i think its called obliches, bikes, and 2 - 1 minute bridges.

Im a sprinter in track so abs are very important in running. Now how many times a week should i do ab excersises?

And does the once a week training per muscle apply to all ages?

I would fire the trainer.....and if he/she is using "Rule of thumb" to train instead of science I would fire him/her. Let me ask you...are you training abs to see them more or make them grow?

[muscle_n_blood]

I like to hit abs 2 x a week with quite a bit of resistance in the 20 rep range. Diet has to be right on to see abs, but hitting them with resistance gives better separation, IMO

[cgandenb1]

chromo56,

This is something you're going to have to experiment with and find out for yourself what works best for you. I know guys who are ab models who train their abs everyday and I know other guys whose abs are just as good who only train them two or three times per week. Everyone is unique and different people respond differently to the same things. If you're sore before you begin an ab workout your abs will probably benefit from you doing less on them. I'm not sure if you'd be better off training them less days per week or training them the same amount of days and doing less sets, but right now you're probably doing more on them then is beneficial. As far as training each muscle once per week goes, I don't think it's age related at all. Some people regardless of their age respond very well to training each muscle group once per week and some people don't.

[chromo56]

i want for them to show and get stronger but i guess having them show (siince it is the summer after all) is higher on the priority list. Thanks eeryone for your imput.