8 week ab workout program for girls to get a flat stomach

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The press is a relatively small muscle group. For this reason, it can be trained almost anywhere: at home, on the sports field, in the gym. There are a huge variety of exercises for this: from simple hanging leg raises, which everyone remembers from physical education lessons at school, to technically complex isolated movements like crunches from the upper block. Each exercise is slightly different in biomechanics and has its own specific execution. You can carry out both strength and more repetitive work aimed at increasing blood supply to the abdominal muscles. All load options have a place in your training process.

In our article today, we will look at the best abdominal exercises in the gym that are most relevant for CrossFit athletes and tell you how to do them correctly.

Description of abs training for girls

It's time to work on your flat stomach! Add the following diet and cardio tips to this 8-week six-pack workout plan and you can help your body build abdominal muscles and lose belly fat.

Training frequency

Perform these exercises 2-3 times a week after weight training. They can also be performed on days when there are no other workouts, or combined with cardio training.

Cardio

Perform 3-4 cardio workouts per week lasting 20-30 minutes. Choose any type of exercise you prefer, from walking and long-distance running to swimming and cycling. It is important to remember that cardio training should be enjoyable. If you don’t like something, then you will most likely skip classes. It doesn't really matter what exactly you do because you'll burn calories either way. We only work on a flat stomach in the kitchen: diet does most of the work.

You can do cardio first thing in the morning, on weekends, or after weight training.

Block Crossover Crunches

• We place pigtails on one of the blocks with a nozzle, on the second - a weight belt;
• lie on your back between the blocks with your head towards the pigtails;
• We take the pigtails in both hands and put a belt on our knees;
• on each of the blocks we set a suitable weight for ourselves;
• we twist, pulling our arms and legs to the center;
• You can twist not only in a straight line, but also to the side, using the oblique muscles.

Photo: instagram.com/fierce_coach/

The right diet for a flat stomach

Simply eating less is not enough. To look healthy, it is important to eat the right types of food and not starve yourself. Many women don't get enough protein and healthy fats and tend to end up thin and their muscles remaining weak.

Tips to improve your diet:

Calories

If you want to lose fat, reduce your daily calories to 1800. Your goal is to lose 0.75-1.0 kg of fat per week. If you lose weight faster, you will also lose muscle mass. The result is a thin but flabby body. So don't lose weight too quickly!

If you are not losing weight at this calorie level, reduce your calories to 1650 per day and review your progress after 2 weeks.

Protein

Make sure you eat at least 100 grams of protein per day. Protein helps you maintain, repair, and build muscle tissue. Many women underestimate the amount of protein consumed per day, so it is worth monitoring the intake of this vital macronutrient.

If you find it difficult to consume 100 grams of protein per day, consider protein supplements.

Helpful Tips – A healthy diet is much more important than just the amount of calories and protein. Follow these tips to enrich your diet:

Healthy Fats – Make sure 20% of your calories come from healthy fats. Healthy fats are essential for proper functioning of the endocrine system, brain, fat loss, and much more.

Carbohydrates - Try to avoid the white poisons - white sugar and white flour. Instead, choose nutritious sources of carbohydrates such as oatmeal, rice, quinoa, fruits and vegetables.

I'll be slim!

When going to the gym for a thin waist, like my friend’s, young ladies should remember: you will not achieve good results if you have extra pounds.

Burn the fat first, then work on your abs!

First, I advise you to start a weight loss program, and only then gradually move on to the abs. However, if, according to objective estimates - your own and those around you - you don’t have a single gram of fat, then I recommend starting today!

How to properly dry the body for girls at home. Secrets of body transformation.

See a photo of the “Make a Waist” hoop here. A good hoop means a beautiful waist!

Abs training program for girls

Snake sideways

• We lie down on our backs. We cross our feet, hold our hands behind our heads;
• raise the torso so that the abs are tense;
• we begin to swing back and forth from this position;
• We add alternating twists in the shoulders and pelvis to the swinging;
• Thus we move sideways. Then back.

It is important not to use the auxiliary muscles of the hip and lower back.

Alexander Ivanov

Photo: vk.com/id322787

Ab exercises that women should not do

We all want toned and defined abs. But did you know that there is an exercise that makes your waist bigger? Let's see how this happens.

We women spend a lot of time creating a training program to properly target muscle groups. We pay close attention to the selection of exercises, their periodization, frequency, intensity and tempo. But when it comes to ab training, we usually just do 1 or 2 exercises at the end of the workout and think we're doing it right. However, this is not always the case.

Make the following changes to your program and you can pump up ripped abs while maintaining a lean figure. Start now, because summer and beach season are just around the corner!

Ab exercises you shouldn't do

I'm guessing you wouldn't want your waist to get wider. If so, then do not perform side bends with weights.

The “problem” with this exercise is that it targets the obliques directly. To understand why it is not suitable for us, we need to know the anatomy of the abdominal cavity and how its muscles function.

The oblique muscles of the abdomen are divided into 2 groups: internal and external. They originate from the lateral (side) part of the lower ribs and are attached to the crest of the pubis and the anterior aspect of the iliac crest. The oblique muscles are located on the sides of the body and help us rotate and bend it, and also support the spine.

Abdominal muscle anatomy

Typically, the oblique muscles are only visible when you start losing fat. If you work them with weights, they will get bigger. And since they are located along the sides, the waist will appear wider. You probably wouldn't want that.

It's important to note that dumbbell side bends are not a bad exercise in and of themselves. Many people love them because they strengthen the core, and some athletes specifically want to increase their waist size. But if you are striving for an hourglass figure, then it is better to avoid this exercise.

Exercises to work on a slim waist

You can still do weight training exercises for your rectus abdominis (to get that coveted 6-pack), but don't do the same for your obliques. When working on the latter, it's best to stick to higher volume (i.e. reps) that doesn't add muscle mass.

Here are a few of my favorite exercises that will strengthen your core without making your waist look bigger:

• Leg raise while lying on your back
• Raising the torso on an inclined bench with turns to the sides
• Hanging Leg Raise
• Elbow rotation supported by a fitball

Features of the female body

What is a woman's main goal in life? I think it's extremely simple. Give birth to healthy offspring and continue your family line. Therefore, the female body is “sharpened” precisely for this.

The female body tends to accumulate nutrients for the future (in reserve). This ensures better survival for the child. After all, our ancestors had big problems with food.

Women have much less anabolic hormones (testosterone) and fear hormones (adrenaline), so they are virtually unable to reach true muscle failure on a set (when the muscles are no longer able to contract properly to perform another repetition).

A man, through pain and a grimaced face, can force himself to do a couple more repetitions, and a woman (if she doesn’t foolishly use steroids), although she will be physically able to do a few more repetitions, will be forced by her brain to stop.

This is one of the ways the female body saves energy (what if the girl doesn’t have enough energy for the child on a hungry day).

Women have much less myofibrils (muscle fibers). Therefore, failure training for 6-10 repetitions, which works so effectively on men, is not suitable for them.

Women have much less muscle in their upper body than in their lower body. This is also very logical. After all, in this way a woman better protects her child (strong muscles of the legs, buttocks).

And since muscles are a very voracious thing in terms of energy, nature has endowed a woman with a smaller volume of muscle tissue in “less important” areas of the body (arms, shoulders, back, chest, neck). Therefore, women’s lower body responds very well to training.

Separately, I’ll say about girls’ abs. Because girls experience severe menstrual pain, nature has taken care of reducing the neuromuscular connection in this area so that women do not go crazy. Therefore, it is much more difficult for girls to pump up their lower abs than for men. I have a very cool article about how to quickly pump up your abs at home.

Metabolism is much slower than that of men. Energy consumption in a calm state is much less. This is necessary to ensure better survival of the child. For the same reason, women have much less muscle compared to men, because... muscles spend a large amount of energy, and this is not beneficial for bearing a fetus.

Women's muscles store glycogen better. Glycogen, let me remind you for those who have forgotten, is the fuel (energy) in our muscles, which the body devastates most quickly during physical activity.

Therefore, carbohydrates are deposited into fat much faster in girls, but at the same time, the female body converts fat into energy much more easily than the male body. The more muscle there is, the more glycogen will be stored (increasing fuel tanks).

We must remember that the required amount of carbohydrates will be easier to store in the muscles and this is good, because. gives additional volume and fullness to the muscles, but an excess amount of carbohydrates will very quickly be stored as fat deposits, and this is already bad, because Hardly anyone likes extra fat.

I know that girls really like to experiment with food (although I don’t encourage this on a diet), but I have an interesting article about protein shakes at home for a set. In the same article I talk about protein shakes for weight loss. I'm sure you'll like it!

A very important point is the menstrual cycle! It imposes certain restrictions on women's training. Now I will explain why.

In the first two weeks after menstruation, a woman feels a strong influx of strength and energy, so at this moment you can give a heavier load (strength load). After the egg has matured, ovulation occurs (approximately on days 12-16 of the cycle) and regardless of whether the egg was fertilized or not, the female body goes into an “energy-saving mode” for an average of two weeks (until the next period).

Therefore, it is very important to use microperiodization of loads. Those. after ovulation, do not train the lower body (legs and abs), and also switch to a lighter (lighter) load.

Aerobic exercise (fast walking, running, cycling, etc.) is best for burning fat. There is no particular difference here from men. Fat burning occurs best from brisk walking (35-50 minutes), with a heart rate of 110-130 beats per minute.

But the term “fat burning” is not entirely correct. Fat does not burn due to temperature, it oxidizes under the influence of a large amount of oxygen!