Introduction
If you want amazing abs, then go on a diet. Don’t train your abs. You already have the muscles. If you can’t see them it’s because you’re too fat. You can’t affect the fat by exercising the muscle underneath. You need to diet to lose that fat while training to be as strong as possible.
Training the Abs
The abdominal muscles are muscles like any other. Aesthetically they can grow or shrink. It’s interesting that nobody does 100-rep broomstick curls to build their biceps, but they use an equivalent technique for their abs: hundreds and hundreds of head movements they call ‘crunches.’
If you train your abs effectively, hard and heavy, like any other muscle, then they will grow. If your abs grow, you will eventually have an ugly, lumpy tummy. And that’s not very attractive!
If you train your abs ineffectively, such as doing 100-rep crunches, then by definition you wasted your time anyway. And that’s not very smart.
So you can effectively train your abs and make your abdomen look worse. Or you can train abs ineffectively and waste your time… As I said before, training abs is a complete waste of time!
back stabilization
The mantra of all conventional “fitness consultants” is that the abs (and all the other tricky little muscles in and around the midsection) stabilize the lower back, which they do, and therefore we should train our abs to strengthen the back…? That logic is similar to training your biceps to strengthen your triceps because the triceps ‘stabilize’ the elbow. It’s a totally backwards load of nonsense that stems from the ‘experts’ fear of back injury litigation rather than the welfare of their clients.
The smartest people realize that to strengthen and stabilize their backs they must, and this may be surprising, train their backs! By training your back hard and heavy, your abs will obviously develop in proportion – they are needed for stabilization, remember! As a bonus, if you train your back, then it might be strong enough for you to lean over without having to focus on flexing your abs, so you don’t tear yourself up.
In case you haven’t noticed, having to consciously flex your abs to move without hurting your back isn’t normal or healthy. You’re in very, very bad physical shape if you have to do that.
Crunches, Swiss Balls, and Core Stability
One of the most pathetically bland exercise techniques in recent memory is the core stability nonsense that came with the Swiss Ball revival. Did you know those stupid balls have been around for a century? Arthur Jones, one of the forefathers of high-intensity resistance exercise, wrote about how worthless they were in the 1950s. But when something can be made for 8 cents and sell for $80, you need a little gibberish! science to justify it! And for enough money, science can prove anything. Just ask the soy and wine industries.
Swiss Ball proponents, despite being generally thin and weak, claim that virtually all physical limits are the result of insufficient “core stability”. If you can’t squat 200kg it’s not because your quads or back are too weak. It’s because your ‘rectus abdominis’ is too weak. Apparently, circus tricks on a Swiss ball will have you squatting 200kg in no time. Though for all the squats they can do on Swiss ball, I have yet to see a Swiss ball defender with big, muscular legs that can squat a big, heavy barbell. And I’ve seen elephants do Swiss ball squats at the circus and their ab definition still sucked!
If you want core stability, try placing a 100+ kg barbell on your back and doing Walking Lunges. Gold Foot Bar Presses. Or Power Cleans, Deadlifts or Squats. Try training hard instead of farting with techniques (like Swiss ball training) that make hard training impossible.
There is no BS way to Abs:
If you want ripped abs and a strong, healthy, stable back and midsection, then:
follow a proper diet (i.e. low in carbohydrates and high in fat and protein)
train hard and heavy with weights focusing on lifting increasingly heavier pounds in deadlifts and squats
Conclusion
If you want to see your abs, get rid of the fat! If you want ‘core stability’, lift massive weights into free space. If you want a strong, stable, and injury-free back, work out your back! If you don’t want to lift a lot of weight (or at least do very intense exercise) and you don’t want to diet then you will never get abs and you will probably have back problems. Regardless of what you want or don’t want, training your abs is usually redundant when it comes to looking at them.