Category: Ab Workouts

Core strength and visible abs are not the same thing. You can have a flat, defined midsection and a genuinely weak core — most people who train aesthetics without functional work fall into this category. And you can have a strong, stable core without visible abs, if body fat is higher.

Squat University approaches core work from a different angle than most fitness content. Their focus is on functional core stability — the kind that protects your spine during heavy lifts, reduces lower back pain, and builds the deep abdominal muscles that most popular ab exercises completely miss.

The Deep Core: What Most Routines Ignore

When people talk about ab exercises, they usually mean the rectus abdominis — the visible six-pack muscle. But the core is a system of muscles working together. The transverse abdominis, pelvic floor, multifidus, and internal obliques form what’s sometimes called the inner unit, and these muscles create the intra-abdominal pressure that stabilizes your spine under load.

A weak inner unit means more lower back strain during squats and deadlifts, worse posture under fatigue, and a higher risk of injury over time. None of that shows up in a crunch test. It shows up when you’re squatting heavy or standing for hours.

The Lock Base Five Routine

The routine consists of five exercises: the dead bug, bird dog, side plank, glute bridge, and a plank variation. Together, they train anti-extension, anti-rotation, and hip activation in a way that traditional ab work doesn’t touch.

The dead bug is worth singling out. Lying on your back with arms and legs raised, you extend opposite arm and leg toward the floor while keeping your lower back pressed flat. The goal is to resist lumbar extension while moving your limbs — this is exactly what your core has to do during a squat or deadlift. It’s harder than it looks, and most people immediately feel how underprepared their deep core actually is.

The bird dog trains the same anti-extension pattern from a different position. On all fours, you extend opposite arm and leg while keeping the spine completely neutral. Any wobble or rotation signals that one side of the core is weaker than the other.

Why This Matters for Getting Abs

A stronger deep core does two things for your visible results. First, it improves how you perform in the gym — better bracing means more output on the big compound lifts that burn the most calories and build the most muscle. Second, a well-trained transverse abdominis acts like a natural corset, creating a flatter, more compact-looking midsection even before significant fat loss.

It’s not a replacement for diet and cardio. But it’s a piece that’s missing from most people’s programs.

Eight Minutes, Every Day

The appeal of this routine is the time commitment. Eight minutes before a training session serves as an activation warm-up. Eight minutes after waking up starts the day with movement and sets up good posture for the hours ahead. There’s no good excuse to skip it.

After two to three weeks of daily practice, most people notice they’re bracing better under load, their lower back feels more stable, and their posture has improved. These aren’t dramatic before-and-after changes — they’re functional ones that make every other part of your training more effective.

Watch the full routine below. Squat University walks through each of the five exercises with clear form cues, and the eight-minute follow-along format makes it easy to drop this into any part of your day.

There’s a temptation, especially at the start, to rotate through as many ab exercises as possible — thinking variety equals progress. It usually doesn’t. The abs respond to the same training logic as every other muscle: consistent mechanical tension, progressive overload, and enough recovery. You don’t need a dozen exercises. You need the right two.

ATHLEAN-X has been making this argument for years, and the underlying biomechanics back it up. The rectus abdominis primarily performs spinal flexion and posterior pelvic tilt. The obliques manage rotation and lateral flexion. Exercises that don’t demand both of those things tend to shortchange the muscle.

The Problem With Most Popular Ab Exercises

Crunches done with the feet anchored recruit far more hip flexor than ab. Planks are a great anti-extension exercise but provide almost no dynamic tension on the rectus abdominis. Sit-ups have the same hip flexor problem as crunches — potentially worse, since the range of motion is larger.

None of these are completely without value. But treating them as your primary ab builders will leave you disappointed. The exercises that actually develop the abs take the muscle through its full functional range under load.

Ab Wheel Rollouts: Full Extension, Full Tension

The ab wheel rollout is one of the most demanding ab exercises you can do without equipment. Rolling out forces the abs to resist lumbar extension — they have to work extremely hard to prevent your lower back from collapsing. Rolling back in requires the abs to generate force to flex the spine.

Most people start by rolling out too far and using momentum to come back. The form cue that matters: keep your lower back flat throughout the movement, and control both phases. If you can’t complete the rollout without your lower back caving in, shorten the range of motion and build from there.

As a beginner, start from the knees. Progress to standing rollouts over time — they’re one of the hardest bodyweight movements you can do.

Cable Crunches: Load the Muscle Directly

The cable crunch shows up repeatedly in ab training research because it checks the right boxes: it takes the abs through a full range of motion, it’s easy to load progressively, and it keeps tension on the muscle throughout the movement.

Set the cable above head height, kneel, hold the rope behind your head, and curl your ribcage toward your pelvis. Your hips should stay stationary — the movement comes entirely from spinal flexion. A slow, controlled contraction at the bottom is where the work happens.

Start light. Most people are surprised how little weight they need to feel this properly. Once you’ve got the pattern down, add weight each week the same way you would with any other lift.

How to Program Them

Two to three sets of each exercise, two to three times per week, is enough for most people. Give your abs 48 hours between sessions. They recover relatively quickly, but they still need time to repair and grow after loaded work.

Within a few months of consistent, progressive training with these two movements, you’ll notice more thickness and definition in your midsection — regardless of what the scale says.

The video below goes deeper into the biomechanics behind each exercise and shows the exact form cues that separate the effective version from the common mistake everyone makes.

Most fitness advice about abs comes from people who are already lean. They built their physique years ago, and they’ve forgotten what it’s like to start from scratch — or they’ve never had to figure out the underlying physiology. A conversation with someone who studies this for a living tends to be a lot more useful.

Chris Williamson’s interview format cuts through a lot of the noise. Instead of workout videos and before-and-afters, you get a researcher sitting down and explaining what the evidence actually says. And some of it contradicts what fitness influencers have been repeating for years.

The Fat Loss Reality

The most important thing an exercise scientist will tell you about abs is also the most ignored: getting visible abs is a fat loss problem, not a training problem. The muscles are there. You’re born with them. What hides them is body fat — specifically subcutaneous fat in the abdominal region.

Training your abs makes them stronger and potentially thicker. But a person who does zero direct ab training and gets lean enough will still have more visible abs than someone who does 500 crunches a day and doesn’t address their diet. The order of operations matters.

This doesn’t mean skip the training. It means don’t expect training alone to get you there.

Where Cardio Actually Fits In

Cardio is one of the more debated variables in fat loss. The research position is more nuanced than “do more cardio to burn more fat.” NEAT — non-exercise activity thermogenesis, basically how much you move throughout the day — often explains far more variation in body composition between individuals than structured cardio does.

Two people with identical diets and workout programs can have very different fat loss results based almost entirely on how much they move outside the gym. One person walks to meetings, takes stairs, fidgets constantly. The other sits at a desk and drives everywhere. That gap can easily add up to 300–500 calories per day.

Practically, this means that before adding another gym session, it’s worth asking whether your daily movement is actually where it should be.

The Genetics Question

Exercise scientists are more direct about genetics than fitness influencers are, because they don’t have a product to sell you. Some people have favorable fat distribution — they lose abdominal fat relatively easily and hold it in other areas. Others store fat preferentially in the midsection and are the last to lean out there.

This doesn’t mean abs are impossible for anyone. It means the timeline and required leanness vary considerably between individuals. Someone who struggles with abdominal fat storage might need to get to 10% body fat to see definition, while someone with favorable genetics sees it at 14%. Neither number is wrong. They’re just different people.

Understanding this prevents you from comparing your progress to someone who is working with a different genetic baseline.

The One Thing That Does Work

Despite all the nuance, the core answer doesn’t actually change: a sustained caloric deficit, enough protein to hold on to muscle, some form of resistance training, and patience. No protocol changes that. The scientists just remove the mythology that gets layered on top of it.

What the science does offer is permission to stop overcomplicating things. You don’t need a 12-step ab protocol. You need to be in a deficit long enough for your body fat to drop to the point where your abs become visible.

The full interview below is worth watching if you’re tired of fitness content that oversimplifies or flat-out misleads. It runs through the actual research on fat loss, muscle retention, and what separates people who get results from those who don’t.

If you’ve been doing 20-minute ab circuits, crunching away six days a week, and still not seeing results — this might be the most important thing you read today. The truth about building a visible six pack is simpler, and also harder, than most YouTube workouts make it seem.

Kinesiologist Jeremy Ethier recently broke down the exact two exercises he used to build his own six pack abs — no equipment needed, no marathon sessions, just smart, targeted training. The video has north of 7.6 million views, which for a purely instructional lifting video is saying something.

Why Most Ab Workouts Are Inefficient

The problem with most ab routines is that they overload your hip flexors instead of your abs. If you’re doing straight-leg raises or sit-ups without consciously controlling your spine, a huge chunk of the work is being done by muscles you’re not trying to train.

Jeremy points out that the abs have one primary job: spinal flexion — specifically, curling your spine into a rounded “C-shape.” Any exercise that keeps your back flat is shifting the load away from the abs and onto the hip flexors. Once you understand that, it changes how you approach every rep.

Exercise 1: The Reverse Crunch (Lower Abs)

The reverse crunch targets the lower portion of the rectus abdominis — the part that tends to be the hardest to develop and the last to show. In this movement, instead of lifting your upper body toward your legs, you curl your hips and lower back up off the floor toward your ribcage.

Key form cues to get this right:

• As you lift, think about pressing your lower back into the floor and rolling your pelvis up — not just swinging your legs
• Control the descent slowly. The lowering phase is just as important as the lift
• Your legs are just levers. Don’t focus on where your feet go — focus on the spinal flexion happening in your lower back

Start with 3 sets of 8-12 reps. As this gets easier, you can add ankle weights or hold a dumbbell between your feet for progressive overload.

Exercise 2: The Crunch (Upper Abs)

Yes, the humble crunch — but done correctly, it’s one of the most effective upper ab exercises in existence. The mistake most people make is treating it like a mini sit-up, lifting their shoulders a few inches off the ground while keeping their back flat.

The key: round your spine into a “C” as you crunch. Think about pulling your ribcage toward your pelvis, not just lifting your head. Your low back should peel off the floor slightly at the top of each rep.

As you get stronger, progress to the cable rope crunch at a gym — this lets you add significant load to the movement, just like you would with any other muscle group you’re trying to grow.

Body Fat Is the Real Variable

Jeremy doesn’t sugarcoat this part: no amount of ab training will make your six pack visible if it’s buried under fat. For most men, abs become visible somewhere between 10-15% body fat. If you’re currently above that, your primary focus should be on nutrition and calorie management.

Train your abs with these two movements 2-3 times per week and focus on eating in a modest caloric deficit. Build the muscle, lose the fat covering it — that combination is what actually produces results. Not endless cardio. Not 100-rep sets.

Two Moves. Done Right.

Done with real form and progressive overload, these two movements will build your abs more effectively than any 20-minute circuit. Watch Jeremy’s video for the form breakdowns — the details he covers on the reverse crunch alone are worth the watch.

You don’t need a gym membership or expensive machines to build a strong, defined core. In the video below, fitness expert Fraser Wilson walks you through a killer home bodyweight ab workout that requires absolutely no equipment. Whether you are traveling, stuck at home, or just prefer to train in your living room, this routine is designed to scorch your midsection.

Why This Home Ab Workout is Perfect for Beginners

One of the hardest parts about starting a new ab routine is figuring out how to perform the exercises correctly. Reading a description of a “Russian Twist” or a “Plank Knee In” can be confusing. This is a great workout for beginners because it is a follow-along video. You don’t have to figure out how to do the exercises from text—just hit play, copy Fraser’s movements in real-time, and you’ll be getting a great home ab workout in.

The Science of Building Abdominal Muscle

To get a six pack, you must treat your abs like any other muscle group. They need to be trained through a full range of motion with varying exercises to target the upper abs, lower abs, and obliques. Fraser’s routine is highly effective because it hits the core from every angle:

1. Lower Abs: Movements like Leg Raises and Reverse Crunches specifically target the lower rectus abdominis, which is often the hardest area to develop.
2. Upper Abs: Traditional Crunches and Heel Taps force a deep contraction at the top of the core.
3. Obliques & Core Stability: Russian Twists and Plank variations engage the sides of your torso and build deep stabilizing strength.

The Full Bodyweight Ab Routine

Here’s the full workout structure, in case you want to save it to your phone or do it without the video. The protocol is simple: perform each exercise for 30 seconds, and rest for 30 seconds between the blocks.

Block 1: The Foundation

• Lying Leg Raises
• Russian Twists
• Crunches
• Plank Knee Ins

Block 2: The Burn

• Reverse Crunches
• Side Crunches (Both Sides)
• Plank Rotations

Block 3: Explosive Power

• Scissor Leg Raises
• Heel Taps
• Explosive Sit-ups
• Shoulder Taps

Block 4: The Finisher

• Flutter Kicks
• Cross Crunches
• Ab Contractions
• Plank Up Downs
• Mountain Climbers

Abs Are Made in the Kitchen

Remember this golden rule: ab workouts can build your ab muscles, but your diet will burn your stomach fat to reveal the muscle underneath. You cannot out-train a bad diet. To learn how to eat to get six pack abs, check out Jeff Cavaliere’s Six Pack Abs Nutrition System or start with a simple intermittent fasting protocol to kickstart your fat loss today.