How Do I Get Perfect Abs?

In this podcast, we ask Christine how to train your abs, how often, what happens if you overtrain and when the optimum time is to train your abs during your workout.

• When do I train abs?
• How many times a week do I train abs?
• Weighted ab exercises, yes or no?
• It still comes down to diet 
• Be creative 
• Which one is Christine's favourite ab exercise?

Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

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Transcript

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Ash Horton:

Welcome to Muscle Talk, where you'll get world champion advice about nutrition and stacking on muscle. Our host, Christine Envall, she's a three time world champion bodybuilder and IFB professional, a food scientist, and a founding co-owner of our podcast sponsor, International Protein.

Ash Horton:

In this podcast Christine how to train your abs? How often? What happens if you overtrain and when the optimum time is to train your abs during your workout?

Ash Horton:

Abs, how do we train them? What's the best way to do it? How often? How do we mix that into our gym sesh? How does it work?

Christine Envall:

Okay. There isn't really probably a right or a wrong way to do this, but I'll talk about how I did it and how it was done back in the day. I'll talk about different things that you may need to consider depending on where you are in your training career, because abs are one of those muscle groups that, you want to have a certain amount of definition, but you certainly don't want to thicken up your midsection. If your structures slightly a wider waist, there's no point in having big, thick, chunky abs, if it makes you look blocky. If you're prone to that, then you want to maybe avoid certain things. But if you're starting out and you're just trying to get some definition, then you will do things a little bit differently.

Christine Envall:

Me personally, I actually used to train my abs every single day. Every single workout at the end of a workout-

Ash Horton:

At the end?

Christine Envall:

At the end of a workout. It was just that thing that I did. A little circuit of abs that I would do every single day. Off season, probably not as much. And the reason for that was my stomach would get a little bit too large to actually feel like I was getting a good contraction.

Ash Horton:

Yeah.

Christine Envall:

So a lot of the importance of abs is that you're getting the correct contraction, as if you were onstage, like you're flexing into your abs. So if you aren't able to do that, you're not really going to be working the muscle. It's like doing a sit-up wrong, you're just folding your body, you're not actually contracting a muscle. That makes sense. It's hard to show visually, but imagine you're trying to get top of your ribs to touch your hipbone, pushing down like that, and that's causing the ab to contract. But if you can't do that because your stomach's too big-

Ash Horton:

Just got a fat roll in the middle.

Christine Envall:

Yeah.

Ash Horton:

Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Christine Envall:

So it's not as effective. But the thing with abs is, I've never trained weighted abs. I've always just done as body weight movements, crunches and different variations on that because I wanted to build strength and a certain amount of definition, but I didn't want to build up thick obliques or big chunky abs because on a woman to have that chunky ab look can distract from your shape. And you want to continue to have a smaller waist and broader shoulders. And that goes across the board for everyone. If you look at a lot of the professionals nowadays, people talk about that big gut kind of thing that they have, which totally detracts, whereas a nice flat stomach, but with good definition, that's what you're trying to achieve.

Christine Envall:

And that nice look that you see on the physique competitors or when people talk about abs, that's what they're thinking of, is that look. So there's no reason why you can't train your abs every single day, because it doesn't matter if you overtrain, because like I say, you're not trying to build a lot of thickness, you're trying to build thickness, strength through your core, but you're just trying carve out that definition that's there. If you were to treat it like a chest muscle and say, train it twice a week, very, very heavy, that's where you're going to get that thick, chunky, which you might see on more of strength type of athletes and stuff, where they're really relying on that core strength to actually make them do the heavy squat or the heavy deadlift.

Christine Envall:

Whereas bodybuilding's not about that. It's not about having so much absolute strength, as much as it's working the muscle correctly. So that would be my tip with abs, is to create yourself a little circuit. And I think a lot of people are doing that now for other muscle groups like glutes or things that they particularly want to define, but not necessarily get super thick and chunky, like what you might want to do with it back or your chest or your legs. So create a little circuit. I used to do five different exercises and just do 20 reps and just kind of do it in a continuous circuit. So literally we're doing 100 rep circuit. So it's totally different style of training, you'd never really do 100 reps on chest in one, without a break.

Ash Horton:

Yep.

Christine Envall:

So that would keep the fitness, keep a certain amount of strength. But I found that when I would get to competition and the fat was all gone, that I always would have a very defined set of abs, but not so thick that it was sitting out in big chunks, let's say. Some of the guys might want that, but for women, definitely not something that we want. However, if you're very, very early on in your career and you have zero definition in your abs and it's not because you have a whole lot of body fat on top of it. Say you're relatively lean, but you're wondering why you don't have those chunks, like what everybody else does, that's because you haven't really developed them enough.

Christine Envall:

If you picture the ab block, it's the muscle, but it has the cartilage between, and that's what creates that six pack look like. So you've got the centre part and then you've got the cartilage going across, which separates out and gives you that six, or if you're very genetically gifted, an eight pack, which is genetics that separates and has that extra block there. So if you don't have enough that it's sticking out further than the cartilage, then that's why you're not going to get that definition. So there is a point where you do need to do some work to create that. Now, some people will get that just by doing regular crunches and leg raises and just basic ab exercises. But if you're finding that you're not getting that, that's when you would use a weighted exercise.

Christine Envall:

So you'd use some weighted crunches using the cable, or you potentially use some of the ab machines that are around at the moment. Where you're essentially sitting in a thing and literally hold you in place and crunches you forward. That would be the time when you would start to use those kinds of machines or exercises to get a little bit of definition coming through in the first place. And then once you've got to a certain amount, then I would cut it there and not do any more weighted abs, because, as I said, you're just going to encourage your body to build up a kind of a thicker look that you don't necessarily want onstage. It's not aesthetic. If you're doing a different kind of sport, you're not bodybuilding, you're doing CrossFit or you're doing just your functional type exercises. There's a lot of focus on core and there's a lot of focus on doing weighted ab work and building strength.

Christine Envall:

Because that is purely about building strong, solid abs. And again, if you look at the style of people who are doing that, they generally do have a thicker core and you see that reflected in it. And as I said, it's not necessarily a desirable thing in bodybuilding, but depending on the functionality, then you would change around how you're actually training and you potentially would look at your training for that reason of doing weighted, twisting movements. And the things like Russian twists, which is when you have the twisting from side to side in that crunch position, but with your legs up twisting from side to side with a ball. The heavier the ball, obviously, the harder it is, the more it's going to put stress on your obliques, the more it's going to encourage that muscle to thicken up and grow.

Christine Envall:

So it has its role and its place, depending on what your activity is. If again, you're more power lifting, you probably want to have a stronger core because so much of the work that you're doing, you can't have a weakness, you can't have strong legs and put a heavy weight on your back and then not have a strong core to support that or you're going to slip a disc or cause some kind of an injury. So if you're doing a power sport or strength sport, then you probably want to work more on building that strength through doing more traditional strength building exercises for your abs, but if you're trying to go for an aesthetic look and you just want to have a nice trim waist, then you're going to go for very, very high reps where you don't want to overbuild the muscle, but you just want to create that definition and strengths.

Christine Envall:

Obviously thinking about your abs, your obliques and your ab muscle are two different muscles. And again, you want to have a certain amount of definition between those because that's where you get the [inaudible 00:08:30] down the side of your obliques, and it adds so much decoration to your physique on stage because when you're doing a side chest pose, a lot of that is showing. If you're not lean through there, you don't have a lot of definition through there, that pose doesn't look as good as what it possibly could. Whereas when you've got the obliques are all striated and you hit that pose, is so much more visually to see an adds a lot more to that. So again, it's that focus on doing movements, which replicate what you're doing on stage, like side crunching or anything that you would do in your posing, is always a really, really good idea and also helps you to connect.

Christine Envall:

Because again, like any other muscle group, if you're not connecting with what you're doing, it's very hard to target it properly. So a lot of the poses for bodybuilders doing something, which replicates the pose is the perfect way of knowing that you're connecting with that. So that's abs. I would do them everyday that you do weight training, just tack them on the end of your workout.

Ash Horton:

How long do you do them for?

Christine Envall:

Well, it wasn't a time thing as much as I would do the number of reps.

Ash Horton:

Yeah. Right.

Christine Envall:

So I would do 20 reps of my basic crunch, then I would do 20 side crunches, 20 on each side. And then I would do a lower app crunch. And then I would do, say, some leg raises. I would do another sort of variation on a crunch. I wouldn't really time it as much as I would just run through and do those 20 reps.

Ash Horton:

Just get it done.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. If they're starting out, you'd probably do 20 reps, take a break, 20 reps of something else, take a break. I'd build up to that fitness over a number of years of doing that. But as I said, when you're getting ready for a competition, there was always a lot of extra ab flexing that happened, I guess, outside of the gym because like I said, that to me is replicating what you're wanting to do on stage and you don't need to, to grow that. So you don't have to worry about having weight behind it as much as it's doing that movement. If you just flex your biceps without doing any weight to them, they're obviously not going to grow and you want the bicep to grow, but because you don't want the abs to grow, you can happily flex them.

Christine Envall:

You can also check how the body fat levels are, because you can sort of tell whether or not there's still a lot of fat on top of them or whether you still need to diet a little bit harder. So it's a really good check coming into a competition. However, people who have genetically really defined abs have to check other body parts because that's a trap to fall into. Some people naturally just don't carry body fat on their abs at all. They carry it on their lower back or there glutes or something. And they use that as a checkpoint when they're getting ready for competition and the abs look fantastic and then they kind of get onstage and they turn around and the rest doesn't. This is a bit of a digression, but you need to check your worst body part rather than your best body part.

Christine Envall:

But for me, my abs was one of my slower parts to come in. So I would use that as a gauge as to whether or not I was lean enough, whether I could see what I needed to say on my abs. But yes, the idea is to keep them fine, but be defined without being chunky.

Ash Horton:

Right.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. So not too much more you can say on abs other than be creative, connect with them. You should be able to really feel what part of the meat is crunching because there's obviously a low... They're all connected to the same place, but you can obviously emphasise lower abs by things where you're kind of raising your legs rather than crunching through from your ribs. But there’s-

Ash Horton:

Of course, you do a bunch of HIIT workouts too, don't you?

Christine Envall:

I do. And we do-

Ash Horton:

So there'll be abs and that as well.

Christine Envall:

There is. I probably now do them at the end of my workout, three out of the five days. And that will really depend on if we've done something in the HIIT class or not because some of them we don't do abs. And then for some reason they might do three different ab exercises in the one class. But I must admit that they have a lot more imagination when it comes to ab work, as to what bodybuilders have. Yeah. So we were very much the staple, crunches and leg raises and that was good enough because, don't get me wrong, you don't need to be crazy inventive because they did the job. If anyone does Google my old pictures and stuff like that, I always had a very neat set of abs, but it's way more fun to do a whole lot of different variety. And some of the new favourites that I have are reverse ab crunches where you utilising more of your leg weight to bring up to, to do that.

Christine Envall:

And that's the thing, you are using weight by doing crunches and leg raises and things like that, but it's still body weight. You not having to sort of add on top of that. They have a greater imagination of all different kinds of ab work that you can do that don't hurt your lower back, but they actually do kind of activate that abdominals and force them to work and also work in the obliques, which again, that gives you, without having too much oblique, without going too thick, but at the same time, it gives you a definite strength to your structure. If you don't have solid obliques, the physique looks weak onstage. So you do need to get a nice development of the oblique without going too far that it's kind of bulging out over the side of your hip, which, I'm sure we've all seen that before with some of the very heavily muscled guys where the oblique is so developed that it actually kind of sticks out like a shelf up and over.

Christine Envall:

It's one of those things where it's still comes down to diet. Unfortunately, you can work your abs all day, but if the body fat sitting on top of them, you're not going to see them. I think that maybe is where people think, if I make them chunkier and if I work them and I make them bigger, they think that they're going to pop through the skin, but it doesn’t-

Ash Horton:

But it's body fat.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. It's the body fat. Like I said, if you've diet down and you can see that you don't have any body fat, but you still have a flat look and you're not seeing that definition of each chunk, then I would incorporate some weight into it. But once you've diet down and you see that you actually have blocks of abs, then I would stop doing any kind of weight and movement at that point there and just work on how they get work through doing squats. Because you're obviously working when you're doing other exercises, but I wouldn't actively go and do a weighted type exercise unless you actually felt that it was impeding your stability or your strength like that.

Christine Envall:

But yeah, every day incorporate a few different ab [inaudible 00:14:54]. You could do it, like I say, after your faster cardio or after your weights workout, or even just have your own little routine that you just... Set up a little routine of exercises, 20 reps of each different type, make it more variety because it's kind of boring doing the same thing all the time and then just do it like a little circuit.

Ash Horton:

Do you remember the Ab Flex that you could buy? Three minute abs? I was sure you were going to pull that one out and say how great that was.

Christine Envall:

The Ab Flex?

Ash Horton:

Yeah.

Christine Envall:

No, what I was going to say was the, I don't think it was the Ab Flex, I think it was the... That had the rocker thing.

Ash Horton:

Oh yeah, the Ab Roller. They were actually all right [inaudible 00:15:34].

Christine Envall:

They were they were. Not the one where you have the roller machine because that's freaking hard, and if it wasn't for my injuries [crosstalk 00:15:41].

Ash Horton:

I know what you're talking about. Yep.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. And again, that's a classic core exercise that you will see at a HIIT studio. And I see a lot more people doing those kinds of exercises.

Ash Horton:

Yep.

Christine Envall:

Definitely activates your core and makes it work. But you have to have, obviously, the strength through the upper body to be able to do that, otherwise it's a big fail and you'll end up on your abs.

Ash Horton:

But you're talking about the one that's in a frame that you roll forward and-

Christine Envall:

Yes.

Ash Horton:

I found them really good.

Christine Envall:

Yes. The reason why I really, really liked those because a lot of people, the technique of doing a crunch, whilst it sound simple, is still badly done. And people are rolling too far, like a sit-up or they're not crunching it enough. And I think that that AB Roller really, specifically, got you in the right spot. You couldn't go wrong.

Ash Horton:

They're finished. I haven't seen one in a long time.

Christine Envall:

I haven't seen one. Probably someone's got one in their garage somewhere, but no, you did use to see them in a few of the gyms and stuff. In America, you see some flat kind of a bench, which simulates that, but I don't really like those, the feeling isn't quite right. The Ab Roller was nice and natural, but it really, it did [inaudible 00:16:43]. I read that it's like, you're trying get your rib to touch your hip, that's essentially the movement that flexes your abdominals and really that Ab Roller locked you into that particular position. And some of the machines that you see around will do that. So again, you don't have to wake them up as much, but they will actually force you into that position. Having said that, some of them really don't. So you got to be careful and make sure that the machine that's at your gym does what you want it to do. Because, as I said, some are good, some are bad to get that position right.

Ash Horton:

What's your favourite ab exercise?

Christine Envall:

At the moment, it's actually the reverse crunch. And that's actually, something I did pick up at the HIIT studio. So essentially you're lying on your back, like a crunch. You do have your shoulders off the ground, so you've activated the upper part of your ab. Your legs are bent. So it's actually you're raising your knees, tilting at the hip to create the lower ab crunch. And then you're putting the stress onto your lower abs by the weight of your legs coming back down again. So it's sort of gentle on the back because you don't have your legs extended, but it's very, very targeted to that lower ab, but you've got that upper ab activated by having your shoulders off the ground. You're in that crunch position for the top or you're moving into the crunch position by bringing your knees towards you. There's a little video on my Facebook page doing it.

Ash Horton:

Right. And you haven't mentioned planks. You're not a fan, are you? I remember you saying that you weren’t.

Christine Envall:

I'm not a fan of the plank. And this is a funny story. We had a challenge F45, just this week gone, and I managed to do a five minute plank, which I was very surprised at because I didn't think I could even stay still for five minutes. But I didn't have the technique right. I kind of swayed my back too much and I didn't realise you're supposed to have a flatter back. I'm not a fan of the plane because I don't like being still.

Ash Horton:

Yeah. Okay.

Christine Envall:

I really don't like being still, and that's why after five minutes I was like, it’s-

Ash Horton:

So mountain climbers would be better for you?

Christine Envall:

I don’t-

Ash Horton:

That's a plank, but moving your legs, isn't it?

Christine Envall:

I like moving planks.

Ash Horton:

Yeah.

Christine Envall:

Moving planks is, when you're going down onto your elbows and then back up again, because that's working your delts and your upper body and you're doing something. But just to be there in one position, I'm like, "Okay, what next? What next?”

Ash Horton:

Fair enough, fair enough.

Christine Envall:

I think the winner of the challenge did it for 16 minutes or something.

Ash Horton:

Oh wow.

Christine Envall:

Man, I couldn’t-

Ash Horton:

That is boring.

Christine Envall:

That's right.

Ash Horton:

Hope they're listening to a book or something.

Christine Envall:

That's right. You need that. But obviously a plank to me, I feel that more in my shoulders-

Ash Horton:

Yeah.

Christine Envall:

Shoulders and arms. And as I said, I had my technique a little wrong, so I felt it towards the end, in my lower back. But it doesn't stress my abs so much because it depends on your fitness, I think. Where you actually feel those kinds of things.

Ash Horton:

What about over-training the abs? I can't remember what I was doing, but I've been at a point where I've been I just probably shouldn't actually exercise for a good period of a few days now just because I'd overtrain them and they were done for almost a week.

Christine Envall:

Well, that's the thing, bearing in mind that they do give you that core stability. There's going to come a point where depending on your fitness, that you make them so fatigued, that they kind of useless for doing anything. They are obviously supported by a little muscle that kind of wraps from your lower back around into the front ab, and I can't think of the name of it, but it's actually why I started doing leg raises because I had an issue with my lower back. And the chiropractor said, you need to strengthen muscle at the back, not just the muscle in your abs. You have to actually balance front and back. And he said the only exercise, which really effectively does that, is a leg raise because it activates that muscle. But again, like anything, if you go too far, too much, you just... It's like, if you change your biceps every single day and you got to a point where, I can't even contract this anymore.

Christine Envall:

So if you do that with your abs, you actually would jeopardise everything. But you then try to just squat when you had fatigued abs or tried to deadlift, try to squat. Anything that requires core stability. If you're in a machine, fine.

Ash Horton:

So is that why you always do abs at the end of a workout?

Christine Envall:

Yep.

Ash Horton:

Right.

Christine Envall:

Yep.

Ash Horton:

That makes sense.

Christine Envall:

For me, yeah. I don't want to bring anything that's pretty fatiguing that I don't want to. Obviously doing a cardio HIIT type thing, you kind of do it interspersed during. And the whole point of that is that you should be able to go from doing an arm exercise due to a leg exercise to a delt exercise and you should randomly be able to handle pretty much anything, that's why it's functional. But weight training is all about getting the optimal muscle growth and focusing on that particular muscle group. And you're not really worried about the fitness overall, as much as you're trying to assimilate that particular muscle group and get the most out of it. So if you're restricting what your legs can do, because you've fatigued your midsection, then that's not good for your legs because you're trying to stress your legs to their maximum.

Ash Horton:

Makes sense. Thank you very much, Christine. Another very interesting podcast. And if anybody's got any questions, jump onto our Aussie Muscle Facebook page.

Christine Envall:

Or if anyone's got any favourite ab exercises that they want to share, because I think everyone will be interested. Because as I said, there's such a variety that you can do and you can be pretty creative. So I would love to see what people are doing for their abs and what their favourite ab exercise is.

Ash Horton:

Awesome. Get involved.

Ash Horton:

Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognise that these tips are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that buy now button. So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle guru, three times, world champion, Christine Envall.