Just wanted to come here to say, that I've more or less hit the 100lbs lost mark and am seeing muscular definition all over my body for the first time since 2014 and your videos have informed me beyond the bro science i was doing in my late teens and 20s. I'm in my 30s now and I'd give 22 year old army me a run for his money. Thanks for indirectly guiding me on this, doc. Much love.
@@SteveEaglesIt's actually a heat differential thing. Point your feet towards an open fridge while your upper body gets warmed up from the oven. Has all the metabolic benefits of both a sauna AND an ice bath.
Coming back after 4 years of not training and eating anything in front of me, it's nice to relearn the basics from the man himself. I cant even hit my old warm up weights, but I'm in love with the process just like the first time I tried body building. Thanks for the great video Mike! I got the app, let's double down!
I've been running a circuit of ab wheel outs, hanging leg raises, woodchoppers, and ab tucks forever. Pretty much hit the whole core from all directions with those 4 exercises.
Dr. Mike this week was the first week that I finally took your advice and started controlling the eccentric parts of my exercises and man the burn is crazy.. thank you for all of your advice and keep up all of the good work. You too Jared Feather IFBB Pro.
Questions Dr. Mike! 1). What are your thoughts on loading the obliques with weight? Some body builders say you should never train the obliques with weight, what are your thoughts? 2). Is there value in non-weight loaded twists toward stomach control, improving your vacuum, and waist reduction?
1. If you’re doing any exercise, you should progressively overload the exercise with weight when you’re able to. For the obliques you can do cable woodchoppers, standing or roman chair side bends and suitcase carry. 2. I’m assuming you mean ab control like how yogis and belly dancers move their belly. This is mostly practice with a lot of focus on the mind muscle connection. The stomach vacuum is a time tested exercise you can begin with. It works on the transversus abdominis which, when strengthened, will pull your belly in a bit and will “reduce your waist”.
@@Bunndog I’m aware but was wondering if thickening the obliques is not great for bodybuilders. Frank Zane swore by not adding weight to his oblique work and doing exercises like seated and bent over bar twists, you could control the stomach on stage and improve your vacuume. So that’s why I’m curious on Dr. Mike’s thoughts
Most of everything in all your videos I've heard before, but hardly ever all in one place, definitely the number one channel I recommend to people trying to get into fitness.
Weighted decline ab crunches got me visible ab definition. Now I can crunch a 45 pound plate for 12 reps. Definitely going to try other exercises mentioned here.
Or if you respond really well to that movement, just move the load further - lengthen the lever arm. So hold the weight behind your head or even more, extend your arms fully above your head and go down
It's currently my favorite ab exercise. I wish it were easier to progressively overload though. I do a 45 plate for 25 reps. I need something easy to hold while crunching that's heavier.
@@Ryan30z I noticed that it is only a problem if you overextend too much so that your back starts to arch (even if it is very slightly so), so probably just lower the weight a bit, work more on the longer eccentric for safer and higher quality reps and I think it should be fine to do weighted decline crunches.
Great stuff, Dr. Mike! Can't emphasize enough how underrated eccentric control is in training. Just started your Hypertrophy App training over the weekend and I'm excited about this next step in my fitness journey 💪🏼
Probably the most important video on the internet. All ab training videos are either "abs in 30 days", "this is how you starve yourself" or "69 million crunches" If I got this advice earlier it would have saved me a lot of time. Abs are a muscle and should be trained like a muscle. If you can't add weight to the exercise it's useless.
Using my knowledge gained from other muscle groups I focused on led me exactly to the conclusion of this video when I started doing specific ab work. They're popping already just a few months in
Decline bench sit ups are fantastic. It gives you a full ROM and you can hold a plate or dumbbell for progressive overload. The higher up the weight is the better, a db held above your head is the best but personally i do a db held to my collarbone so I don't have to worry about grip strength.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:25 🏋️♂️ Use a repetition range of 10 to 15 reps for abdominal training, similar to other muscle groups, for optimal growth. 02:14 🔄 Perform exercises with a full range of motion for your abs to maximize muscle growth and injury resistance. 03:51 💪 Hanging leg raises with extended legs and controlled descent can build strong and well-defined abdominal muscles. 04:17 🤯 Slowly lowering your legs during ab exercises (eccentric control) can lead to greater muscle growth, strength, and injury prevention. 06:49 🏋️♀️ Consider using abdominal machines with progressive loading for more effective and trackable ab workouts compared to static holds like planks. Made with HARPA AI
I SERIOUSLY LOVE the science information given here! This helps my anatomy/physiology brain (I’m a massage therapist & studied under a Life college professor) to see clearly in my mind the muscles & how they’d work best. Thank you for your crystal clear wording. Now I’m gonna get to work to get my after having babies body strengthened FOR REAL!
Hanging toes to bar is the king of lumbar and hip flexion if done with no swing which requires brutal esentrics as he described. Once you can do 3 sets of 10 I recommend using lifting straps to hang longer and grind out extra reps at the end of each set. Good for the shoulders and decompressess the spine, especially when done weighted. Combined with neck curls and Lsit pull-ups to fold people backwards, double underhook to bare hug, row and flex your spine. Don't be too sudden about it or you can paralyze them before they tap.
Can't thank you enough, Dr. Mike. I'm just beginning my bodybuilding journey, and I'm so glad I found your material. Came from being a skinny guy with sedentary work and life, to skinny-fat over the pandemic, and I am seeing RESULTS in just a few months with a caloric deficit and training with the full ROM and controlled eccentric. These three tips have made it so easy to know I'm doing it RIGHT from the very beginning!
I love your content and the logical and humorous way you explain everything relating to health and fitness. I especially love when you train people and we get to see how absolutely wrecked they are at the end. It makes me so excited to get to the gym and challenge myself in similar ways.
Establish a better muscle mind connection, think about bringing the pelvis up instead of the legs. The Hip Flexors will work with the abs, and there is nothing wrong with that, just like how the glutes(Hip Extenders) will usually work with the lower back.
Mind muscle connection and focus on not elevating the legs, but moving your hip upwards. Hip flexors will be involved always, however you want to limit that
@@XHALE303 Oh, that's crazy, I usually just counted to 100, said to myself "that sounds about enough" and stopped for the day. Definitely sub-optimal training, but it shows that you really don't need to do anything smart to get some newbie gains.
@@leonro In my defense it was before internet. All i had was a magazine how to train like Tarzan with dumbells...which i didn't have🤣So i went for quantity over quality. Still having the gains. 🦾
As any other muscle group: normal rep anges, full ROM, control eccentric, progressively overload. Great exercise: hanging leg raise. Dr. Mike says if you can go from dead hang to upwards V with great form and control all the way down for 10 reps, you're mad strong.
A bit thank you from someone that has been doing a lot of crunches with not too great result. What you are saying in this video makes a lot of sense and I will try this out tomorrow. Thanks again ! :D
Thank you! I’m constantly searching this channel for an training videos. Would you guys consider doing a full training video with a guest like you guys do with every other body part? That would be dope.
I have pretty blocky abs and they've grown the most from cable crunches 8-15 reps (can't go any lower reps because I'll float off the ground, already using a gym pin) and hanging leg raises. I rarely see anyone doing weighted ab movements, it's crazy. Everyone was doing them 20 years ago, but now everyone is afraid of having a big waist or is indoctrinated by the functional movement crowd, maybe? Having big, blocky abs makes you look leaner even when you're not that lean.
I was lost when it came to abb work outs. I'm serious when i say thanks for clearing up all the non sense ideas about abb training. Im excited to know im actually training correctly and im excited to do them today!
Hey Dr. Mike, any tips on avoiding lower back pain when doing ab work? For some reason, most ab exercises seem to aggravate my lower back. I have no injuries, and never had any pain doing heavy lower body Barbell exercises, yet any time I do hanging knee raises, or lying leg raises, or even just situps with my feet ankered, I get lower back pain. Only exercises I can do completely pain free are planks, and band assisted Sit-ups (band hangs from pull-up bar, and I hold on to it. That way I can do the situps without ankering my feet.). At some point these will become way too easy to get a good stimulus out of, but I don't know what to do then. I've tried super setting any ab exercise with Band Good Mornings, and that alleviates the pain immediately, but I fear that if I just treat the symptom and keep pushing, I would just end up making it worse and potentially get an actual injury in the future from it.
Hard to tell why without further questions but, perhaps try to focus on the mind muscle connection (MMC) with your abs and also technique with all ab movements. For knee/leg raises, it helps to think of "showing your ass" in front of you, in order to ensure you are tucking the hips under, rather than just lifting your legs with predominantly hip flexor. Try that and see how you go. Sometimes you can even perform some ab isometrics in your warm up where you contract your abs as hard as possible to establish a better MMC. Let me know if any of that helps!
the average gym bro says “squats and deadlifts give you all the ab work you need” - usually while having no ab definition and never having tried any proper heavy abdominal work. Kinda how they’ll say not using straps is all you need for forearms, while having underwhelming forearms.
What could be better than, great advise combined with well presented information and a sense of humour that is so well delivered. Thanks Dr. Mike. Getting you app next month
@@TheCCBoiNo there is nothing like that position is superior to any other sex positions in that sense. Different sex positions stimulate fer dufferent sensations. Don't give people wrong informations!!
@@user-en5vj6vr2uNo there is nothing like that position is superior to any other sex positions in that sense. Different sex positions stimulate fer dufferent sensations. Don't give people wrong informations!! 🎉🎉
For the leg raises just want to add that you might hurt your back if you jump into this with bad form or if you're too weak. Good progression is a hollow-body hold on the ground, and then do "leg raises" on the floor. THEN go for the hanging raise. I gave myself a lot of low back soreness going too quickly into hanging leg raises. Everyone's different but for anyone prone to back pain just be aware of this.
Is it okay to have a slight arch in your back at the lengthened position in any ab movement? Some fitness influencers suggest not letting your lower back arch during ab exercises (e.g. When you at the bottom of a V-up) to put less stress on the lower back. But then stretching any other muscle under load is great for hypertrophy. Would be interested to hear your thoughts Dr Mike
Dear Dr. Mike, I share the opinion that using cable to perform ab exercise, with the use of a rope, like in the 6:55 minutes mark is a poor exercise, since you are passing tension to much weaker spots like your elbow, shoulders and sometimes cervical (some people rest their hands on the forehead as they do this exercise). Please consider substituing the rope for a TRX and straping it around your shoulders (by the armpits) with something soft that will stop the straps from digging into your skin. Like that you can progress your weight load much more, I do warm-ups with 80kg with my abs and I'm no bodybuilder. Work load for me would be in the range of 130kg, there's no way I'd sum that load using a rope as demonstrated in the video. Besides that, I'd rest my hips in the vertical pole behind me so they won't move during the execution. Please consider testing this method. thanks for the videos edit: correct time mark
I did boxing and kung fu for years. Did abs at the end of every class, high rep pretty constant from one movement to the next. Conditioned my abs like crazy and slightly built them. Wasn’t until I stopped the insanely high rep stuff and went to low rep with resistance or some kind that they actually got thicker.
Craziest ab exercise I know is backflips. The explosive extension of the spine is rapidly controlled by the abs (eccentric) and instantly switches to an explosive concentric contraction. It kills the abs
Much better editing with the transition into the ad spot, would still be nice to have a brief verbal transition, even just Mike going "Next, let's talk about this, but before we do..."
Dr. Mike, in 2024, how does the lengthened partial discussion impact the full range of motion bullet point here? are mini crunches more acceptable than previously thought?
Great topic. If anyone else out there has had lower back issues, proceed with caution. My go to here for midsection work is the back expert, Stuart McGill. His most recent text is Back Mechanic. Did I see the Bruce Lee move, the Dragon Flag? Respect!
I have had a period of horrible sleep, waking up, and turning around maybe 30times a night or so. would wake up with sore abs in the morning 😅 the doctor asked me what sports I do because of the abs. sleep has improved again thankfully. but that was an unorthodox training for a couple of months..
Doing the Lord's work. Thanks Dr. Mike! Don't know why I haven't considered that abs shouldn't be trained at extremely high rep ranges as quickly as possible before. Ha ha.
I think this is good advice if your a bodybuilder or looking to have big aesthetic abs. However if your squatting/Olympic lifting and you want a strong core to stabilise your spine during lifts then a lot of people seem to recommend doing isometric exercises to train your abs to stabilise your spin instead of training your abs to bend it, which is the opposite of what your want.
Dr. Mike, I get painful abdominal cramps almost always when I do ab exercises, the pain scares the crap out of me, not to mention the embarassment of squirming in excruciating pain at the gym. How should I approach this? Will development of my abs make these cramps go away?
Same here. And it's normal. Dr Mike is suggesting you do weighted instead of a ton of sit ups. But, the pain comes from a lack of stamina. You need to test yourself everyday with a 1 minute timed sit-ups. You'll gain stamina and it will take more reps until it hurts... I feel your pain...
That can come from the inner stomach muscle not being strong enough. Which just means your body is dealing with it by you doing the workout. I injured my back had to do workouts like dr. Mike is saying but i also do a thing for the stomach every day from gymnastics. It's like hollow body work, it's a floor progression that gymnest use to do front levers. And hey i am not a doctor, but this is just knowledge from my back pain thing happening. You have some muscle that is underdeveloped an no mind connection which causes cramping some times in response to being worked so hard or for me it was. Yes i get a tension pain from basic stomach workouts.
I'm sure I speak for many saying your an awesome source of information! No bs info and a great since of humor. Love you Dr. Mike! P.S. Thanks for introducing me to Myo-Reps, THEY BURNS SOO GOOD!
6:49 this guy has worked out more than ever have and I've never used that machine so i don't know, BUT aren't his hips moving back like that taking focus away from the abs?
Given that it's supposed to be all about maximum resistance in stretch I'm not sure why a lying leg raise isn't better than hanging. With hanging it's got everything Mike usually doesn't like. It's unstable so you can't apply as much force on the muscle. And, the peak of the resistance is closer to maximum contraction with minimum resistance at full extension. If the advice is all about carrying over what's best for other exercises to abs, ROM, 10-15 reps, etc. it seems a lying leg raise is better, perhaps with the back arched by something under it.
I stick to straight legs raise, feet touched the bar and slow eccentric, then dragon fly and done fors abs. Sometimes I crunches with Swiss ball, it gives you a hell of strech!
I am a old school gym, rat, so that means today people will call me meathead, that’s cool by me being oldschool. I can appreciate your approach and doing your videos, don’t change anything, you are a riot, thank you homeboy
Hey, I really like the videos. Been watching them a lot lately. A thought popped into my mind just now, maybe you're already going to do this but it's possible to add a QR code when showing your app. That would be pretty cool for a quick download. Either way, I'm downloading it! Thank you
Calisthenics can be progressively overloaded too. Quite easily in fact. You explain that when you talk about hanging legs raises, which are calisthenics.
I've always had good abs without training them just by getting very lean and mostly ignored them for years. Now I'm starting to take them a bit more serious just to see what happens, using Weighted Situps, Hanging Leg Raises and Cable Crunches.
In order to do really full ROM v raises you do really need to be hanging. It requires a slight backwards lean for balance that doesn't work on the pad machines. Those are very good for stability and reducing momentum use for most people though.
I do hanging v-ups and am working towards toes-to-bar (controlled, no kipping). it's weird, I don't ever see anyone else in the gym doing these controlled. everyone is swinging all over the place!
i like to use the back extension horse backwards and do real slow crazy GHDs, usually 4-5 sets of 8-12. If you use a bar over your shoulders you can isolate the abs and make them used more without the extra momentum your arms swinging can cause.
Dr. Mike, really appreciate your channel and videos. Seen great results from following your channel. Might I be so bold as to ask - can you do a video on men (me) that have disastasis reci and how to fix it pretty please :)
