Killer ab workout

Check out this months Oxygen magazine. You can pick and choose from 4 categories to make your own tailored ab workout AND you can use it forever. They even enlisted a probability expert to figure out that there are 1,800 different combinations using the 17 ab exercises they list. They divide the 17 exercises into mix and match angle menu's. There are the Lowers (choose 2), the Uppers (choose 2), the Obliques (choose 2) and the core (choose 1).

I superset all of the exercises other than one of my oblique ones, which wasn't in the list but i love it and chose it instead of the other exercises there (hanging twisted crunch). The article doesn't tell you to superset, i just did that to make it harder and to make my abs kill. I do each ab exercise for 3 sets and 15-10 reps. A superset means that you group two exercises into a set (group of 2) and do the first then 2nd and then take a 30-60 second break and then repeat until you have done 3 sets.

Lowers (your lower abs):

Reverse crunch on the bench (lay on a bench and curl your legs up working your lower abs, to make it harder keep your legs straight)

Dumbbell v-up (Basically raising your arms and legs up from the floor until your body forms a v, hold the weight overhead and keep arms straight reach your arms towards legs and don't hold the weight overhead once at top of movement)

Uppers (your upper abs):

Weighted crunch (floor) (Lie on your back and hold weight over chest and crunch straight up, pause at the top of the movement)

Ball pass (Lie on your back and crunch up passing the stability ball to your feet, lower and then crunch up again passing the ball back to your hands)

Obliques (Side muscles of your abs):

Reaching crossover crunch (Lie faceup with knees bent and curl up to your side reaching your hands to the outside of your shoe, pause at top of movement and the lower and repeat on other side)

Hanging twisted crunch (This is very advanced. Basically you hang from a chin up bar and crunch your knees up to the side and repeat on other side)

If that is too difficult try:

Oblique crunch (floor) (Lay your knees on right side and crunch up, repeat on left side when finished reps on the right)

Core (Inner ab fibers):

Side plank (Lay on your side and then lift yourself up on your elbow keeping your hips straight and your body in a perfect line, hold for 1 min)

I tried to find some pictures but i couldn't. So if you don't understand my brief description let me know and i can explain more in depth. Or you can pick up February's issue of Oxygen.

Also don't forget to work out your lower back which is considered the opposite or your abs. You must always work out the opposite of the muscle to keep everything balanced. I workout my back on Mondays so that's when i do a lower back exercise.