The Best Ab Exercises Hands Down!
There are a bunch of women and men are researching on the internet trying to find the best abs exercises to help them get an awesome six pack. While it’s certainly true that you need to construct abdominal work outs that give you the ability to focus on the different muscles in your abs, most people hopefully know by now that the only way to get an awesome six pack is to work off abdominal fat and focus on lowering your overall fat content.
Sure it would be great to believe all of the commercials and ads created to get us to think that there is a quick fix, the truth of the matter is that no ab cruncher equipment, fat burner pill or six pack abs exercise can take the place of good old fashioned hard work! Before we go any further put all of your ideas about electrical simulation equipment and cheesy ab crunchers out of your mind. It’s time to get to work by putting the effective ab workout exercises listed below to use!
There really are a lot of effective movements that focus on the muscles in your mid section very effectively, so it’s difficult to cut down the list to just a few of what I really think are the best ab exercises. When I put this list together, I chose ab exercises that place an emphasis on one of the big muscles in your abs, while requiring effort from the other accompanying ab muscles. So that you’re able to train all of your ab muscles in one easy workout without having to get fancy with your ab workout.
The Best Ab Exercises
The Number 1 Abdominal Exercises For The Rectus Abdominous
1. Hanging Leg Raises
2. Hanging Knee Raises
3. Hip Thrusts
4. Weighted Crunches
5. Weighted Decline Crunches
6. Cable Crunches
The Top Abdominal Exercises For Your Obliques
1. Saxon Side Bends
2. Russian Twists
3. Exercise Ball Side Crunches
The Number 1 Ab Exercises For Your Transverse Abdominous
1. Stomach Vacuums
If you understand that you’re going to have to learn how to burn fat right away when you start your abs workouts, then you’ll definitely have a better than average chance at getting a six pack. Simply take a a couple of the best ab exercises listed on this page and work them into your ab workouts. This will ensure that your six pack ab workouts are effective, complete and target all of the muscles in your mid section at the same time.
Read MoreChest Dips Tips And Help
Chest dips are one of those exercises that hardly anybody considers when they sit down to write down their pectoral workout. While chest dips are typically considered a triceps building exercise, the fact of the matter is that with a few small adjustments to your body position during the bottom portion of this movement, you can isolate you pecs and efficiently work your pecs!
I personally think so highly of chest dips that I work them into each of my upper body workouts. It’s a great movement that really doesn’t get the notoriety (as a chest exercise anyhow) that it deserves. If you really want to pack on some real mass in your pecs then you need to learn how to perform this exercise with correct form and make it a point to incorporate dips into your pectoral plan.
While chest dips in general have been traditionally considered to be a body weight exercise, you won’t be able to get the biggest benefit from this movement until you start performing dips with some form of weights. The only catch here is that in order to get the level of muscular strength that you’ll need in order to perform weighted chest dips, it’s a good idea to perform at least a couple of workouts of unweighted body weight dips in order to learn good weight lifting form and build up a level of strength so that you don’t actually wind up hurting yourself once you add some weight to the mix.
In order to incorporate weights into this exercise you’re going to need a weight lifting belt that allows you to hang weight plates or dumbbells between your legs. The most typical piece of equipment that see in the gyms these days is a simple weight lifting belt with two round metal rings in the front that allows you to run a chain through them and, then hang the weight on the chain. These belts can be purchased ready to go, or you can customize one of your own weight belts.
In my opinion, the biggest benefit of weighted dips lies in the fact that you can really stretch your pectoral muscles during the downward phase of this movement in a very systematic way. This allows for more blood and nutrient flow through your pectoral muscles, while improving your range of motion and increasing your upper body flexibility. But you do have to be careful to not push the range of motion of this exercise, as you can hurt your shoulders or tear your pectoral muscle if you don’t use good form.
In order to stimulate the most muscle growth chest dips and and really stimulate some impressive chest growth, you’ve really got to learn how to perform weighted dips with decent form. Practice this movement a few times before you attempt to increase the weight. You may find that you need to build up a base level of strength before you move on to weighted dips. If that’s the case don’t worry about it, just focus on doing your chest dips with good form and your strength will improve.
Here’s how to do dips in order to stimulate some serious pectoral growth:
1.) Place your hands on the parallel bars spaced out to shoulder width
2.) Straighten your arms in order to lift your feet off of the foot stands
3.) Tilt your body forward while slowly lowering yourself (this is what takes the emphasis off of your triceps and places the bulk of the load on to your pectorals)
4.) Continue lowering your body until the bottom of your chest is even with your hands
5.) Push your body back to the starting position by extending your arms while focusing on tilting forward as much as possible.
If you want to build a more muscular chest, then you’ve got to add chest dips to your workouts. Not only will they help you improve your range of motion in your upper body, but you’ll be able to stimulate your pectoral muscles to strengthen and grow like they never have before!
Read MoreBarbell Curl Technique
The straight bar curl is one of the first weight lifting exercises that most people are introduced to when they initially begin working out in a gym. While I can think of probably at least 3 free weights exercises that can allow your arms to grow quicker than simply performing barbell curls, most people think that they need to be performing crazy bicep workouts that include set after set of isolation style bicep exercises in order to build bigger arms.
If you need a good solid bicep specific exercise that will allow you to build muscle mass and increase the shape and size of your biceps, I can’t think of any better exercise to stick into your routine than heavy basic curls. While I typically like to promote compound exercises for gaining muscle mass, I don’t really consider the barbell curl to be a compound exercise. It is in my opinion, as close as you’re going to get to a compound exercise that specifically targets your biceps.
In addition to utilizing the muscles in your biceps, the barbell curl also works various muscles in your shoulders, back and chest, as well as numerous stabilizer muscles. While most of these additional muscles have limited involvement in moving the weight through the complete range of motion of this exercises, simply getting a few of the bigger muscle groups in your upper body involved at the same time will produce a more anabolic environment in your biceps and will definitely lead to bigger arms over time.
The big benefit to performing basic curls is that you can lift very heavy weight, which in turn stimulates new muscle growth with each workout. Even with perfect form, you’ll be able to hammer your biceps with a much heavier weight than you would with any other bicep exercise. Just in case you haven’t caught on yet, training with heavy weights through a complete range of motion is the best way to force new muscle growth and increase your strength levels – so stick with what works here and focus on hitting your biceps heavy!
I always make it a point to include heavy basic curls into each of my bicep workouts so that I can make sure and stimulate new muscle growth every time I blast my biceps. In order to get the most out of this exercise, create your arm workout so that you’re performing heavy straight bar curls before you try to perform any isolation exercises. This will allow you to make sure that you are hammering your arms with heavy enough weight to force them to grow before even think of incorporating any lighter weight isolation movements. I will typically perform anywhere from 1 – 4 sets of basic curls followed by 2 – 3 sets of any other isolation style movement in order to complete my bicep workout.
How To Perform The Straight Bar Curl
In order to build bigger biceps, you need to learn how to perform the straight bar curl with decent technique. If you neglect your weight training form you will eventually wind up hurting yourself and you won’t be able to train at all. So make it a point to learn how to train with correct weight training form.
In order to perform the straight bar curl:
1.) Space your feet out shoulder width
2.) Bend down at your knees and grasp the bar with an underhand grip
3.) Stand upright with the barbell hanging in front of you
4.) Hold your back straight with your shoulders back
5.) Curl the bar up to the top of your shoulders
6.) Pause for a second and then lower the bar (under control) back down to the starting position
If you’re serious about building bigger biceps and you want to do it naturally and quickly, then the simple straight bar curl should be a staple in your everyday arm workout. While there is certainly nothing fancy about performing straight bar curls, over time you will be able to pack on some serious muscle mass on your arms.
Read MorePectoral Exercises: Does It Really Matter?
Just how important are the pectoral exercises that you choose for your chest workouts? If your goal is to build a big muscular chest, then the chest exercises that you choose are critical to the process. If you piece together your chest workout with exercises that don’t fit certain criteria, then you’ll ultimately have a heard time building up your pecs. In this article, I’m going to uncover the specific criteria that your chest exercises need to meet in order for you to stimulate some serious chest growth, as well as list a few of my favorite chest building exercises.
First things first. In order to stimulate chest muscle growth, you absolutely have to perform muscle building exercises that meet a few conditions. First, the pectoral exercises that you choose, need to allow you to actually target your pectoral muscles. If you choose chest exercises that place most of the emphasis on your shoulders, then your shoulders will be doing most of the work and in turn achieving the benefits of doing that work (you’ll stimulate muscle growth in your shoulders instead of chest growth). So you want to focus on movements that specifically target your chest muscles. It’s ok if the pectoral exercises also incorporate your shoulders or triceps, but the primary muscle group in the movement should definitely be your pectoral muscles.
The second pie
ce of criteria that the pectoral exercises that you choose for your upper body workouts need to meet is that each of the exercise that you select need to allow you to train with a fairly heavy amount of weight. Lifting progressively heavier weights over a full range of motion is exactly how you stimulate muscle growth, so it only makes sense that if you’re wanting to add size to your chest muscles, then you need to be training with heavy weights. As heavy as you can!
The third piece of criteria is something that most guys completely overlook. You’ve got to actually enjoy performing the chest exercises that you choose! If you hate the exercises that you put into your upper body workouts, you’re not going to be able to hit your pecs as hard as you’d be able to if you really enjoyed performing the pectoral exercise in the first place, so make sure to sitick with a few of the chest exercises that you actually like. That said, sometimes you’ve got no choice but to work in a few pec exercises that you’re les than thrilled about, but try not to build your chest workouts around these pectoral exercises, instead find a few that you really like and fit them into the workout.
Listed below are a few of my favorite pectoral exercises ( in no particular order). Looking over this list of exercises, I can honestly say that approximately 95% of all of my chest workouts are composed of these highly effective pectoral exercises. Once in a long while, I’ll work in a few sets of cable crossovers, but that really about it.
A Few Excellent Pectoral Exercises
- DB Bench Press
- Bench Press
- Incline Press
- DB Incline Press
- Push Up
- Chest Dips
- Dumbbell Flyes
- Decline Bench Press
- DB Decline Bench Press
If you’re one of the thousands of guys out there who really wants to build a bigger, more muscular chest, then make sure that your chest workouts are composed of the most effective pectoral exercises! The majority of your chest workouts should be designed around the short list of pectoral exercises listed above. If you follow no other advice than to simply make sure that your chest workouts are composed of exercises that fit the criteria listed in this article, you will begin to build chest muscle fast.
Read MoreHow To Perform The Seated Press (Shoulder Press)
If you’re looking for a good “old school” shoulder exercise to add some mass to your upper body, then the seated press also known as shoulder press is hard to beat. Not only does it allow you to utilize multiple muscle groups throughout your body as well as many stabilizer muscles, but it allows you to train your shoulders with a very heavy weight.
While this type of basic shoulder training can be hard on your body, if you learn how to do it right, you’ll gain strength and muscle mass in your shoulders and traps. In my opinion there is no better all around mass building shoulder exercise than seated press.
Trust me when I say that there aren’t to many better feelings in the world than pounding out a hard and heavy set of shoulder press. Your traps are on fire and your shoulders are burning, but it just feels great to be able to push a lot of weight up over your head!
If you’re ready to include seated press into your upper body workout routine, then you need to make sure you know how to perform this exercise with correct form. While it’s definitely one of the more effective shoulder building exercises, it’s easy to injure yourself if you don’t perform this exercise correctly.
Check out the seated press (shoulder press) page in Gain-Muscle-Workout-Less.com’s muscle building exercise section and watch the exercise demonstration videos and read through the written exercise descriptions and start performing the seated press with confidence!
Some More Seated Press Tips From Around The Web:
- Product Review: Best Fitness Basic Training Gym – This total fitness gym is featured with a bunch of basic exercising facilities like Seated Press, Shoulder Press, Leg Extension, Standing Leg Curl, Bicep Curl, Triceps Extension. This home gym is comes with a compact design and …
- How To Build Shoulder Muscles – Exercises to Build Shoulder Muscle … – Seated press: Shoulder press is the best exercise to build muscle mass in the shoulder and make your shoulder round and big. Sit on a bench and grab a bar with overhand grip. Lift the weight over your head and lower the bar under …
Best Muscle Building Arm Exercise
Standing barbell curls may be the best muscle building arm exercise for stimulating lean muscle growth in your biceps. While very few people rely on this basic arm exercise, the results that you can gain by adding it to your arm workouts are nothing short of amazing! When I first started getting serious about building bigger arms, I took a “back to the basics” approach and ditched all of the serious isolation movements like concentration curls, preacher curls, machine curls and cable curls and formed my arm workouts around standing barbell curls.
I focused on lifting as much weight as possible through a full range of motion without using momentum and the muscles in my lower back to move the weights. Not only did I get a lot stronger quickly, I soon began to notice that the size of my biceps was steadily increasing as well. Over the course of 4 weeks I was able to add an inch of pure muscle mass to my arm by performing no other muscle building arm exercises.
Ever since this experience, I’ve made standing barbell curls a mainstay in my arm workouts. If I’m running behind at the gym and I don’t have time for a full biceps workout, I just make sure to get 2 – 3 heavy sets of barbell curls in and move on with my life without worrying about losing any size or strength in my arms! If you’re serious about pacing on muscle mass in your arms and you’re already focusing your efforts on training your triceps appropriately, then you may want to work in a few sets of heavy standing barbell curls into your arm workouts each week. There is simply no better muscle building arm exercise that I can think of off hand.
Check out this exercise demonstration page if you want to learn how to perform the barbell curl with correct muscle building form. If you’re looking for a few other effective arm exercises then visit the muscle building arm exercises page and check out my favorite biceps exercises!
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