View Workout (Aaron Lin)
NO MORE ABS WTF?
October 12, 2013 (Morning)
Exercise Type: Run
Comments:
Since some of you have asked, I figured it would make things easiest if I just wrote a log to explain why I took out eagle/bear/ibis from practice time.
When you hear the word "core", what do you think of? More likely than not you think of abs, right? That six pack of brilliance, the holy grail of fitness. For years now, you have all gotten used to core training as doing endless crunches and its variations with some pushups and maybe a couple of planks here and there. Well, I'm here to tell you that your core is not limited to just abs. The heart of your "core" is posterior chain, a fancy term referring to the back of the body. This includes the muscles of the back, glutes and hamstrings. But as far as "core" goes, let's focus on the back, lower back in particular. There is a muscle group called the Erector Spinae, which runs along your spinal column, on its 2 sides. I see this muscle group as the crux of your core. It is what holds you upright, gives you your posture, power and carries you forward. Think of it as a scaffolding for your body. In fact, the way I see it, although abs work together with the posterior to stabilize your core as a whole, it is secondary in nature to the function of the core as a whole. It is simply an accessory, not exactly the bread and butter of your core.
For the great majority of people, especially distance runners, the posterior chain is very under-emphasized in training and even neglected to a huge degree. How many times have you seen a runner during the late stages of a race, with compromised form, hunched over or leaning forward when fatigued? I see this as an imbalance between the anterior and posterior development on that person. The typical "strength training" routine of a distance runner comprises of pushups and variations of crunches for abs. Both of these exercises train the anterior, or frontal side of the body. The posterior or back is neglected. Running is a very forward dominant motion to begin with. When strength training is done exclusively to the anterior, a serious imbalance is created, and magnified under conditions of fatigue during competition. The coach notices that the runner's posture deteriorates during the race and tells the runner to "go do more core work". The runner proceeds to do more pushups and crunches, further deepening this wound.
The exercises that I have made as the staple of the new strength routine include the squat and stiff-leg deadlift. The squat is an exercise that works almost your entire body, emphasizing the posterior chain by hammering your glutes and lower back. The stiff leg deadlift is designed to target the hamstrings, with other muscles such as the glutes and lower back involved. There aren't too many exercises that can target the hamstrings as well as the stiff leg deadlift, and it is important to get some hamstring work in, since most distance runners are quad dominant. Both the squat and deadlift are exercises in which the weight you use force your torso to become parallel to the ground. You must work to fight against the weight to bring your torso upright (think of when I tell you to keep your chest up). This situation actually works your core effectively, and trains your body to stay upright so that you can carry yourself forward.
From my experiences of strength training, I interpret the role of the abs to be a muscle group that tightens to maintain intra-abdominal pressure, which braces the rest of your core, and protects the integrity of the lower back/spinal erectors, so that your lower back can hold up your frame. If you have no substantial posterior chain to begin with, it isn't very helpful to overdevelop your abs. The new med ball routine that has been put in place is one that will work your body as a whole more comprehensively, and it also does incorporate sufficient ab work, as well as twisting motions for obliques. This is done with resistance (weight of the med ball), so that your body is presented with a stimulus to which it must adapt and grow stronger. Together, this with posterior chain focused weight training will provide truly effective training for your core, rendering crunches and its variations a waste of time.
Another problem I have with the typical ab routines is that there is no sense of progression. You do pretty much the same thing every single day. Wonder why the first time you do it, your abs get sore as hell the next day, but after a few weeks of consistent work you no longer feel sore? That's because without progression, your body has become accustom to that workload. It is something your body can easily handle, so it has no reason to adapt and make itself stronger. So after a little while, you are no longer experiencing any benefits from doing the same thing over and over again. That is why I see it as a waste of time. With weights, you can increase the number of reps, sets and weight used to continually progress and continuously give your body a reason to grow stronger.
IF YOU WANT 6 PACK ABS, READ ON
I have abs that are well defined and pop out, and I NEVER do bear/eagle/ibis. I don't mean to sound conceited, I'm just trying to make a point. If a guy wants bigger biceps, he's not going to curl a water bottle an endless number of times. If a guy wants to grow his chest, it will not be achieved through endless pushups. Both of these goals must be done through overloading the muscle group with resistance, weights. Muscles respond to heavy loads that it is not used to. Subjecting a muscle to a heavy weight that it isn't used to provides a stimulus for it to adapt and grow. If you want to grow your abs, you should treat them like any other muscle group, because abdominal muscles are simply a muscle group. If you want them to grow, you need to apply resistance. On the off chance that I'm not too lazy to do abs, I'll do something like 3 sets of 10 weighted situps, maybe twice a week. It's as simple as that. Your abs will become sore, and they will grow. Another factor that determines whether your abs are visible or not is body fat. You can have huge abs but they won't be visible if you have a layer of fat covering it. To address this, you would need to have your diet on point so that you shed the fat and let your abs come out. However, when people come to me for help saying they want ripped abs, I don't simply prescribe them a diet. Instead I give them a whole strength training routine along with it. This is because if you simply went on a diet and shed off fat, you will end up weak and scrawny, because muscle is inevitably lost in a caloric deficit. Most guys don't just want to be skinny with abs, but strong at the same time. So what I typically do is I give them a diet that is actually a slight caloric surplus, with an optimal progressive weight training routine. If this is followed consistently, a novice can experience a body re-composition, and end up with lower body fat, more muscle mass, and most importantly increased metabolic capacity. Many people starve themselves in trying to lose weight and end up incurring metabolic damage. We all have seen examples of the person who does cardio 24/7, eats nothing but lettuce, and looks sickly thin. That is an extreme, but simply doing a lot of cardio with restricted caloric intake will lead you down this path. When dieting, you will hit plateaus as your metabolic rate gradually drops to adapt to your decrease intake of food. To blast through this plateau, you will either have to increase energy expenditure thru cardio, or further decrease caloric intake. Eventually if this is repeated enough times, you will be running 2 hrs a day, eating next to nothing, and still having trouble losing weight. This is why weight training with a proper dietary protocol is the most healthy and optimal route to take for anyone who wants to improve their physique.
I think this is enough for now lol.