There's that old saying, "It's like riding a bicycle" which means that a skill, once learned, stays with you forever. I do very little ab work and haven't done any in recent memory.
Yesterday, my son and his friends, a total of 5 young men in the summer between high school and college, asked me to show them some ab exercises while they were lifting in our basement. I taught and demonstrated the Pavel style, modified Janda situp (or whatever we call it these days), plus the hanging leg raise, the Dragon Flag, the Full Contact Twist and, because someone was squatting but not well, a goblet squat with a 28 kg and then a 48 kg bell, both paused and exhaled at the bottom.
The reason I can still do all these things even though I don't practice them is that I learned them as skills, and then I incorporated the principles - use your abs! - into the training I currently do, which is mostly walking with a bar on my shoulders in preparation for a Inman Mile competition in October. The only other things I do are a few military presses, a few bw pistols, and a few light barbell back squats. Presses are fewer than 10 reps, 24 kg, all singles and doubles, squats are with 135 lbs or so but deep and paused.
It was pretty cute - they asked me what was the difference between doing these and doing hundreds of fast situps. I explained that hundreds of fast situps make you tired; these exercises make you strong. I advised them to pick weights and variations that allowed them to do about 5 reps of an exercise in good form and do a few of those a few times each week.
My abs are strong because I learned to use them in my other heavy lifting. My ab exercise skills are present because I learned them well and practiced them a lot for the first few years.
Do your ab work - read HardStyle Abs, learn the movements, become proficient at them, keep them in your arsenal. If you revisit one and find you can't do it, work on it again until you can. Consider this a "strength screening" for your midsection. Your reward will be better safety and better performance in any and every physical activity.
-S-
Yesterday, my son and his friends, a total of 5 young men in the summer between high school and college, asked me to show them some ab exercises while they were lifting in our basement. I taught and demonstrated the Pavel style, modified Janda situp (or whatever we call it these days), plus the hanging leg raise, the Dragon Flag, the Full Contact Twist and, because someone was squatting but not well, a goblet squat with a 28 kg and then a 48 kg bell, both paused and exhaled at the bottom.
The reason I can still do all these things even though I don't practice them is that I learned them as skills, and then I incorporated the principles - use your abs! - into the training I currently do, which is mostly walking with a bar on my shoulders in preparation for a Inman Mile competition in October. The only other things I do are a few military presses, a few bw pistols, and a few light barbell back squats. Presses are fewer than 10 reps, 24 kg, all singles and doubles, squats are with 135 lbs or so but deep and paused.
It was pretty cute - they asked me what was the difference between doing these and doing hundreds of fast situps. I explained that hundreds of fast situps make you tired; these exercises make you strong. I advised them to pick weights and variations that allowed them to do about 5 reps of an exercise in good form and do a few of those a few times each week.
My abs are strong because I learned to use them in my other heavy lifting. My ab exercise skills are present because I learned them well and practiced them a lot for the first few years.
Do your ab work - read HardStyle Abs, learn the movements, become proficient at them, keep them in your arsenal. If you revisit one and find you can't do it, work on it again until you can. Consider this a "strength screening" for your midsection. Your reward will be better safety and better performance in any and every physical activity.
-S-
