Workout Abs Everyday?

[ArkansasRob]

I have read every forum...it's been half and half if you should workout your abs everyday...I want a medical explanation...

[Boss Man]

The best one I can give you is it's personal preference.

Some say every day, some advocate every other day, some do one massive day and some say you don't need direct work, because you get enough from things like Squats, Deads, Cleans etc etc.

in truth it's horse for courses. Although don't give much creedence to people, who claim they do 300-500 sit -ups a day. They're usually celebrities that are economising on truth for one reason or another.

[ArkansasRob]

thats pretty good insight. Thanks

[seanuk]

i work mine every day now if you look at profile pics you will see the improvement to when i used to have rest days but at the same time if you over train your abs and they start to hurt have a few days off hope this helps.

[zachvanslyke]

Liked what Boss said. It's a gray area and depends on how you're working them. From a general standpoint, I wouldn't recommend working them every day if you're training them with heavy weights and volume, but if you train them with low volume and only bodyweight, eg, 3 sets of weightless crunches or something like that, you could get away with going every day. opinion though is that IF YOU ARE ABLE to work them everyday, you're probably not working them hard enough anyway to trigger a real response from them, and all you're doing is just sort of keeping the tone there.
I think abs should be blasted with weights and compound movements to elicit an actual response and be trained 2 or 3 times a week for best results

[AZFitnessGuy]

Rob,

I'm not a doc, but i'm a nursing student and a personal trainer, and answer is, it depends... sorry i know that sucks.

Here's the deal, if you are not sore, in all likelyhood you can do abs everyday, you already work abs everyday in everything you do (this is really apparent when you have a great ab workout and can't laugh or sit without pain!). You also use abs in almost every standing and hanging exercise. If you are training abs for 30 minutes to an hour answer would be no. If you are simply doing 5-10 minutes then most likely you can do them everyday. Abs are subject to so much stress on a daily basis that they recover quicker than any other group. hope this helps!

-Joe
Personal Trainer
http://www.fitnessfromgroundzero.blogspot.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Pilates32]

I agree with the comments above, the core is activated in so many other ways whilst performing big compound moves so every day is unnecessary. I would say for abs, don't just crunch, consider other moves in particular ones that focus on stability. Pilates is good, but so are deadlifts, squats, and medicine ball work for example.

Ian
Pilates32

[chunkfit]

I remember reading in the Arnold Bodybuilding book that during his peak training he would work his abs everyday. Personally, I think it has to be based on how you feel. If you're just doing simple stuff like leg raises and sit-ups, you're probably not going to be shredding your abs that much. If you tear it up with some machine exercises and have a lot of soreness, it doesn't make much sense to me for you to lift abs again when they're already toasted from the day before.

I lift abs 2-3 days a week, but that's just me.

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I love lower ab exercises.