6 Upper Body Ab Exercises

By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS


The thought of having to do an additional 20-30 minutes of
abdominal work after a regular workout can sometimes be enough for
you to skip the ab training altogether. But, with these six upper
body exercises, you'll gain all the benefits and more of a regular
ab workout, without the extra time.

This 15-minute upper body workout will not only build your arms,
your chest, and your back, but every one of these exercises is also
going to work your abdominals.

So this workout will include as I mentioned 6 exercises, but they
will be broken down into 3 supersets at 5 minutes each.

So, the first superset will pair chin-ups with spiderman pushups.

Now, just because these aren't specific abdominal exercises don't
think your abs will walk away unscathed. I remember training a
client before and a couple of days after doing the chinup exercise
she commented how shocked she was that her abs were so sore.

With proper form, the chin-up exercise can very powerfully target
your abs.

For proper form, begin in the dead hang position. Now, keeping your
body tight, brace your abs and pull your body up and chin over the
bar, then in a controlled fashion, lower your body down. You will
noticeably feel this exercise working your lats and your biceps.

Perform enough repetitions that take you until one short of
failure. For example, if you can do 15 repetitions, then only do 14
and so on.

After the chin-up exercise, you will move into the spiderman
pushup. In this exercise, you will get into a regular pushup
position, and then as you come down bring your knee up to your
elbow and back down. Alternate sides.

As previously noted, each superset pairing will be done in five
minute intervals. Once finished with the first superset, move onto
the next upper body combination of one-arm standing dumbbell
shoulder press and heavy weighted dumbbell rows.

For the one-armed shoulder press exercise, place the DB at shoulder
height with your palm facing outward. Next, brace your abs and
place your opposite hand on your side to ensure your obliques are
working while pressing up with the DB. Do eight repetitions for one
side, and then switch to the other side.

Immediately after completing your repetitions for the shoulder
press, move to DB rows. This time you will choose a weight you can
normally do 10 times, but now try to get 12 repetitions. However,
be sure to use only good form.

By keeping your body and back in a straight position, you will end
up working your abdominals very hard, especially as you get closer
to failure and your obliques work against rotation. If you find
that you need to take a 5-10 second rest after ten repetitions in
order to use perfect form for the remaining two, then do that.

Again, you will do this superset for five minutes going back and
forth between these two exercises.

To finish off the 15-minute workout, you'll do two arm exercises
that simultaneously work your abdominals. The first exercise is the
lying dumbbell triceps extension. Now, in order to get a good ab
workout from this exercise, when you're at the bottom position,
drop a little more and you stretch your abs. Then, bring the
dumbbells back up overhead and repeat.

That little extra stretch at the bottom of the exercise will really
work your abdominals to give you that six pack abs look, much like
the stability ball rollout when you stretch out at the end of that
exercise.

The final exercise is the one-armed standing dumbbell curl. For
this exercise you want to begin in a braced position. Since you
will be using a heavy weight, your abs will have to work very hard
throughout this exercise. To get in proper position, if your right
arm is working, then your left leg will be in front. You can do
this exercise for 6-8 repetitions per side.

That's the 15-minute upper body workout that will work your abs
just as hard if not harder than any ab crunching workout you could
possibly do.

For DVD workouts using these exercises please visit:

=> Click Here for more info!!!

Circuits Plus

A lot of OT at work, not a lot of time to write, lately.

I’ve been doing a combination of 2 types of workouts that when mixed create a tremendous amount of variety over a period of time.

The first part is I pick come core exercises, by core I do not mean ab/lower back core, I mean like squat/ bench/ deadlift/etc, to do on 3 days of the week [ Mon. – Wed.- Fri.]
My example will now be as follows:
Monday - Squat and Rows
Wed – Bench and Sandbag shoulders
Fri. – KB Clean and Press and Atlas Stone lifts

Depending on your goals you can work these in a variety of ways, let’s go with strength for now, sets will look like this.
Week 1 – 5x5
Week 2 – 4x4
Week 3 – 3x3
Week 4 – Test
There are few ways you can test – you can go for your 1 rep max, which maybe hard in some execises like atlas stone lifts. What you can also do is test your reps at a given weight, for example if on squats you were able to do 5 reps at 405lbs, test what you can do now for 1 set.

Now depending on your conditioning or how you feel week 5 can be a back off week or start week 1 again, using heavier weights of course.

Now I know you are thinking, “that’s it?” no it is not. At the same time you will also do circuit training after the 1st part. You will create 2 circuits of 4-6 exercises, an exaple would be:
Circuit 1
Thighs
Upperbody push [chest shoulders]
Biceps
Calves
Abs
Grip

Circuit 2
Hamstrings
Upperbody pull
Tris
Calves
Obliques
Grip
You can see how with 2 circuits being done with the 3 part 1 workouts it creates some variety.
You want to do 2-4 rounds of the circuits without overtraining. It is easy for me to say week 1, 2 rounds, week 2 3 rounds, etc, but life happens. I know for my self I may want to do 4 rounds one day and work takes its toll and I get 3 in. The bottom line is after your workout you only have yourself to answer do, “was it your best effort?”.
I also like doing my circuits interval style using “Workout Muse” for this. “Workout Muse” is premade MP3s in various time intervals. Give them a look >>>>Click Here <<<<<