The training and formation of your abs (abdominal muscles) is a subject of misinformation and mythology. People have written wrights and wrongs about this part of the human anatomy. Magazines and TV ads promise you that you will get perfect acts with a few minutes workout per day, but that’s not entirely true. Here’s how you can train those abs to their maximum limit by using gym equipment. These muscles are nothing special. They’re normal like all other muscles in our bodies. You can train your abs just like your biceps or triceps.

Here are some critical elements when training those belly muscles:
1. High intensity muscle overload
2. Progressive intensity which goes from workout to workout
3. Avoidance of overtraining or under training by proper spacing

I’m sure you’ve tried sit-ups or crunches just like everybody else. These exercises are good and can satisfy our point one. But how many people are using them to get to point two? Keep this in mind that muscles only develop when they’re overloaded – above normal intensity. So if you make 20 crunches a day, each day of the year, why would your muscles develop beyond capacity? Exactly, they do not.
If you want to force your abs to grow, you have to increase the intensity. You could add a few crunches every day, but this only increases duration. There’s a better way to get hot belly muscles.

1. Weighted Crunches
2. Weighted incline sit-ups
3. Weighted sit-ups

How to do weighted crunches? Easy! Just lie on the floor with your head close to the low pulley weight stack. Use the rope handle attachment and grasp the ends, thus pulling the cable until it’s tight. Your hands should be resting at the side of your head near your ears. In this position you must now contract your ab muscles in a crunch that lifts your shoulders off the floor and draws the weight stack up an inch or two. Don’t worry if you don’t have the low pulls. You can always use a high pulls that is normally used for lat pull downs. Don’t forget to make 8 do 12 repetitions for each exercise.

A further alternative – just lie on the floor and do sit ups while holding a barrel plate against your chest. The downside of this exercise is that it’s not safe to hold enough plates on your chest safely. But that’s a good problem to have, right? On each successive workout, shoot a 5 – 15% increase of weight you use. If you can’t add 5% increase, it’s time to add more days off between your workouts.