Best Abs Workout for Beginners – Men and Women

                                                                                                 – Abs Workout for Beginners –

This abs workout for beginners and beyond will put your core through the wringer. Everyone wants a toned-up, high definition, solid set of six-pack abs, and for good reason. They are the most iconic visual of both health and hard work. Yes, there isn’t an easy way to get a six-pack. Media sources that keep pushing a six-pack in six minutes aren’t doing anyone favors except themselves.

Yes, these are the best abs workout you can do and recommended by fitness experts. But you need the determination to fix your diet, and the tenacity to keep doing your beginner ab workouts in addition to our other workout routines.

As you progress your abs workout for beginners routine can easily turn into an abs program. But focusing your workout routine on just one body part can get frustrating. Working out the abs especially can feel like an exercise in frustration.

The abs aren’t like other muscle groups like the biceps in the arms. Attaining abs comes down to a combination of diet, training, and overall core strength.

Any abs workout including crunches that’s working the musculature of the shoulders, hips, and midsection will improve your abs.

“For starters, sustaining a caloric deficit, training the whole body consistently with challenging intensities, eliminating booze, and sleeping more will have a bigger impact on the summer six-pack,” says Lucas Dunham, a performance specialist at EXOS. “Core exercises, however, can be catalysts for more frequent, intense training sessions.”

For beginners here’s a personal training tip: hit the abs hard—at the end of a workout or at the end of a cardio session, when you have a little left in the energy tank and you really want to polish off your physique. Let’s get into it.

Abs Workout for Beginners

How it works: Three to five times a week, add these abs exercises for beginners to your usual fitness routine. Once the beginner abs workout moves start to feel easy, progress to the intermediate, then advanced. Need some inspiration? This is what a perfectly balanced week of abs workout looks like.

What you’ll need: A yoga mat for the abs workout for beginners; a resistance band for the intermediate moves; and a stability ball and two sturdy chairs for the advanced exercises.

1. High-tension plank

Why it’s effective: The plank is one of the most common core exercises, ever, but most guys get it wrong. Creating tension in your abs primes your body to maximally contract all of its muscles. “This is a very useful ability when sprinting, jumping rope, and lifting weights,” Dunham says.

How to do it: Get onto all fours and prop yourself up on your forearms. “Turn your palms up toward the sky, keeping your thumbs on the ground, and form a straight line from your head to your heels,” Dunham says.

Squeeze your glutes and quads, which will draw your knees up and prevent sagging. “Brace your core as if you were expecting a kick to the stomach, and press your forearms into the ground,” he adds.

Once you feel everything tighten, squeeze even harder and take big, deliberate breaths as you plank. To increase the challenge, squeeze harder and exhale more air with each breath as you hold the position.

When to do it: “Utilize the high-tension plank at the end of your daily warmup, or between sets of compound strength movements like squats, rows, presses, and deadlifts,” Dunham says.

Perform 3-4 sets of 10-second holds in your warmup, or one 10-second hold between heavy strength exercises.

2. Deadbug

Why it’s effective: “The core plays a big role in helping you move your limbs while stabilizing your spine—an incredibly important prerequisite for most strength-training exercises,” Dunham says. The dead bug protects your lower back mid-movement and keeps you from wasting any energy.

How to do it: Lie on your back, with your hips and knees bent to 90°. Raise both arms toward the ceiling. Pull your lower back to the floor to eliminate the gap. Start by pressing one leg out, and tapping the heel to the floor.

“As you extend one leg, exhale as much as you can, keeping your lower back glued to the floor,” Dunham says. When you can’t exhale anymore, pull your knee back to the starting position. Make this more difficult by holding dumbbells in your hands, or by lowering the opposite arm and leg.

When to do it: Add dead bug variations to your daily warmup, and really master the movement, he suggests. Perform 2-3 sets of four reps on each side at the beginning of every abs workout.

3. Bear crawl

Why it’s effective: “As toddlers, crawling taught us how to have integrity in the shoulders and hips, and how to really use the core when we move,” Dunham says; it can have the same benefit in adulthood, too. “Bear crawls are great for conditioning, finishers, and warmups.”

How to do it: Get down on all fours with your hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Pick your knees up an inch or two off the ground—you’re not sticking your butt in the air, so stay low.

Keep your chest pushed away from the floor as if to avoid something sharp from poking you in the sternum.

Raise your head so you’re just looking in front of you, and start to move forward, using opposite arms and legs. “Try to float with each step, and breathe comfortably,” Dunham says. Ramp up the intensity by moving in multiple directions, and increasing your speed.

When to do it: Add bear crawls into your warm-ups on upper-body days, Dunham suggests. About two sets of 30 seconds will be enough to create torso and shoulder awareness, while 3-5 sets will work your conditioning.

“The bear crawl is great as a finisher because it’s almost impossible to do it without using your core, even when fatigued,” Dunham says.

4. Glute bridge Abs Workout for Beginners

Why it’s effective: “The core and the glutes work co-dependently in training, meaning there must be a balance in strength to optimally use either,” Dunham says.

The classic unweighted glute bridge forces your glutes, lower back, and hamstrings—together known as the posterior chain—to support your weight. Developing your glutes is vital for evenly developing both major core muscle groups. Lots of people use cycling as a soft alternative to this.

How to do it: Lie on your back with your knees bent. Brace the front of your core, push your knees forward, and drive your hips up. Hold this top position for 1-2 seconds, making sure you evenly squeeze your abs and glutes.

When to do it: “This core exercise would be beneficial in a daily warm-up, especially on days with lower-body training,” Dunham says. Perform two sets of 10-20 reps.

5. Hanging knee raise

Why it’s effective: Rock climbers have incredibly strong cores. Your ability to control your legs and torso when hanging is a great way to get your core stronger quickly.

How to do it: Hang from a bar. Use an overhand grip. Squeeze a rolled towel or a pad between your knees hard. Slowly start to curl your knees up.

Breathe out fully when you bring your knees up. Slowly lower your legs, using your core to control the downward movement.

When to do it: Perform 1-2 sets of each as a general warm-up, and implement daily for best results. For the hanging crunch, perform sets of 5-6 slow reps. For the heel hooks, try to get 1-2 sets of four controlled reps per side.

6. Abs rollout

Why it works: Kneeling rollouts are essentially tougher versions of hollow-body holds. Rollouts are a challenging way to improve the quality of your pull-up, too.

How to do it: Get down on your hands and knees. Hold an abs wheel or barbell with plates, or place sliders under your hands. Push your chest up away from the floor until you’re slightly rounded in the upper back. Pull in your belly button and squeeze your glutes.

Slowly start to lower yourself by moving your hands forward. Keep your elbows slightly bent, and shoulders down away from your ears.

Only roll out as far forward as you can while maintaining tension on your abs. (If you go too far, your hips will drop and your lower back will absorb the tension from your abs.) Slowly pull your hands back to you to reset, maintaining a squeeze in the hips.

When to do it: Add this as a warm-up before pull-ups, or use instead of pull-ups if you’re still developing the strength to get one. Keep the volume pretty low, about 2-3 sets of five reps, 1-2 days per week.

7. Abs Workout for Beginners: Butterfly Crunch

• Lie on back with the soles of feet together as close to the body as possible, with knees bent out to sides.
• Place hands behind head, elbows in line with ears.
• Keeping back flat on the floor and stomach muscles contracted, exhale and curl chest up a few inches off the floor toward legs.
• Lower to start. Do 10 reps.

8. Oblique Crunch

• Lie on back, knees bent and feet flat on the floor, with arms at sides.
• Exhale and engage the core while sliding right hand toward right foot. (Head and neck should remain aligned and lower back pressed to the floor.)
• Return to start, then switch sides and repeat the beginner abs workout move.
• Do 15 reps.

9. Forearm Plank

• Start on hands and knees.
• Keeping back and abs muscles contracted, drop down to forearms while extending legs out behind you, resting on the balls of feet. (Be sure to keep back straight, hips up, and neck relaxed — check out more on perfect plank form here.)
• Hold for 3 seconds, then return to start. Do 10 reps.
• Fingers to Toes
• Lie on back with legs straight and extended toward the ceiling, with arms down by sides.
• Keeping back flat on the floor, exhale and contract abs while crunching up from the waist and extending hands toward toes.
• Lower to start.
• Do 2 sets of 15 reps.

When it comes to abs workout for beginners and core exercises, it’s best to aim for compound exercises, which force your core to work in tandem with other large muscle groups.