Dumbbell exercises for six-pack abs

Dumbbell exercises for six-pack abs

Six pack abs are a coveted symbol of a lean fit physique and it is true your abs will show better at a lower body fat level, but just because your lean doesn’t mean you’ll have great abs, just like every other muscle on the body your abs have to be built through progressive resistance training.

Now a lot can be accomplished with just bodyweight exercises, but that isn’t what this video is about today. Today we are going to look at some of the best dumbbell exercises to build your six-pack.

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We are going to start with a straight leg sit up. I like to call it a curl up as you need to curling your body up to really engage your abdominals.

You tend to straighten out once you are in the top position, so it is important to remember to curl your torso again as you go back down in a slow and controlled manner. It doesn’t do you any good to just drop back down. And if you can’t control the descent that’s a sign your not quite ready to do this exercise weighted. It can be done unilaterally, holding the dumbbell in one hand which requires additional core stabilization.

Now, this is a good exercise, but the bent-knee version is even better. It is more difficult and when done correctly you will feel it throughout your entire rectus abdominis, especially in the lower portion of your abs.

Now you probably noticed I did both of those versions without bracing my feet. This keeps the engagement of the hip flexors to a minimum. You should still be conscious of keeping your back in a posterior pelvic tilt throughout the movement.

The next exercise this the weighted crunch which when we do it with our legs up in the air and our knees bent at a ninety almost completely eliminates any hip flexor activation. A lot of people think they are doing a full crunch when in fact they are barely or in some cases not even lifting their shoulders off the ground. A full crunch will have your mid back up off the floor as well as your shoulders. That is one of the advantages of the sit-ups that I first showed you. You can’t fake a rep you either did it or you didn’t.

Next exercise is a Jackknife Crunch. This levels up the intensity by adding in leg movement. Traditionally you start with your arms straight up overhead and lift them up and forward as you crunch your abdominals. While simultaneously raising your legs. You could do this exercise holding a dumbbell in both your hands and feet, but for most people the weight of our legs will probably be enough.

So next we will take a look at our obliques. The external oblique actually runs down the sides of our core and is the largest of all our abdominal muscles. So we are missing a big part of our ab training if we ignore them.

The obliques do a number of different functions one of them being to rotate our torso from left to right. Like when performing Russian twists. I’ve always liked doing this exercise with my legs raised, but if you are new to the movement you can do them with your feet touching the floor or even straight out in front of you.

When doing this exercise you should lean your upper body back to about 45 degrees to the floor. The farther you lean back the more challenging the movement is.

Hold the dumbbell in front of you while rotating your body, twisting at the waist. Some people have a tendency to just move the dumbbell with their arms making the move relatively ineffective.

One of the most important jobs our core does is to stabilize the body both in movement and under load. One of the best exercises we can do to accomplish this is the suitcase carry. This involves obliques, rectus abdominis which of course is our six-pack and our lower back which is part of the core. Really it is a whole-body exercise.

What you want to do is choose a dumbbell that challenges you to maintain good posture while holding it in one hand and walking, focusing on keeping your body properly aligned. If you don’t have a heavy enough dumbbell to challenge yourself try just holding the heaviest one you have while standing on one foot. This will give you much the same result. Of course, this is a unilateral exercise so make sure you repeat the movement while holding the dumbbell on the other side as well.