Training your Abdominals for Endurance
Ab Training and Ab Workout Tips

Since the abdominals are postural muscles many people focus on training them for endurance.

In this day and age, many people lead sedentary lives or have desk jobs, so many fitness programs focus on increasing the endurance of the core muscles.

If you can increase the endurance and stability of your core and postural muscles, then you should be able to maintain better posture throughout the day.

When you're exercising any muscle, you can attempt to increase its endurance, strength, or power.

Endurance refers to the ability to work for a prolonged period of time.
Strength refers to the amount of weight a muscle can move.
And Power refers to the speed at which a muscle can move your body.

In order to achieve any of the 3 goals, your training must be focused on that specific goal.

Building Endurance in Your Ab Muscles

Ab Workout Tip #1: Do more Repetitions.

This is a straight forward tip. If you want to build your endurance, you must do sets with higher repetitions.

The more repetitions the longer the set. The longer the set, the more you will improve your endurance.

To build endurance in your abdominals aim for 12-25 repetitions per set.

Ab Workout Tip #2: Do Slower Repetitions.

Doing 15 repetitions really fast, is not the most efficient way to build your endurance. In order to maximize the improvement in your endurance you must move with a slow tempo.

Examples of slow tempos are 4/2/2 and 3/2/1.

In the tempos, the first number is down phase, the second number is the holding phase, and the last number is the up phase.

Here's what a 4/2/2 tempo would look like if you were doing ab crunches. You would crunch up for 2 seconds, hold at the top for 2 seconds and then slowly lower for 4 seconds. I know that the tempos are written backwards from the order you do crunches, but that's how the physiology nerds write tempos.

If you used the 3/2/1 tempo for crunches, you would go up for 1 second, hold for 2 seconds, and slowly lower for 3 seconds.

You might notice that both of the tempos above are really slow. 4/2/2 is an 8 second repetition, and 3/2/1 is a 6 second repetition. If you did 20 repetitions and it took 8 seconds for each repetition the entire set would take 160 seconds or 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

That's how you build muscular endurance. You need to constantly work a muscle for a longer period of time to efficiently build its endurance.

Ab Workout Tip #3: Rest for Short Periods Between Sets

The rest period in between sets is just as important as the number of repetitions and the tempo if your goal is to develop muscular endurance.

Ideally, you should rest for only 30-60 seconds in between sets if you want to build endurance in your core muscles.

Ab Workout Tip #4: You Don't Need 1000's of Reps

You don't need to do a 1000 sit ups or 100's of crunches to build endurance in your ab muscles.

1-3 sets of 1-3 core exercises is all you need to build endurance in your core muscles.

Summary of How to Build Endurance in Your Abdominals

There are 3 main steps to building endurance in your abdominal muscles. First, you should aim for 12-25 repetitions per set. Second, you should use a slower tempo-- 6-8 seconds per repetition. Lastly, you should only rest for 30-60 seconds in between each set.

You don't have to spend a hour working your abs or do 1000's of sit ups and crunches.

Visit the Directory of Ab Exercises to learn more ways to work Your Abdominals

Or visit the Picture Directory of Ab Exercises Part I
Picture Directory of Ab Exercises Part II
Picture Directory of Ab Exercises Part III

Yours in Health
Dr. Charles Physical Therapist/ Personal Trainer

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