If you’re trying to sculpt your abs, you probably know how frustrating it can be to do countless exercises over several months and still not see results.  It can make you want to give up and live with your slightly less than perfect abs.  If this has been a problem for you, there’s a good chance you may not be doing the exercises correctly.  To see dramatic results in your abs, it’s absolutely necessary to perform your ab workouts correctly, so here are 4 tips to do just that. 

  • If you start to feel any pain in your back, you should stop doing the exercise immediately.  When ab exercises aren’t done correctly, they can injure your back.  Obviously, pain in your back while doing the exercise is a sign that you’ve possibly injured it.  When you start to feel the pain, stop what you’re doing, and let your back rest.  You can go back to doing your exercises the next day you have scheduled if the pain is gone.  To prevent further pain or injury, make sure you control the exercises and do them slowly.  Good form is very important when you’re working yourabs.    


  • Remember to breathe when you’re doing your ab exercises.  Many people have a tendency to hold their breath while they perform the exercises.  It’s important that you don’t do this.  Your body needs to deliver oxygen to your muscles and your organs, especially when you’re exercising.  When you hold your breath, you make it harder for your heart and other vital organs to get the oxygen they need to function properly.  Holding your breath while working your abs can also cause them to pooch out more, since you’re contracting the muscle around the air in your abdomen.  You should breathe out as you contract the muscle and breathe in when you release the contraction.  Breathing this way can also make the exercise a little easier for you.   


  • Perform each exercise slowly.  The slower you perform the exercise, the harder you work your abs.  When you’re trying to get through your entire workout, it can be tempting to rush through the exercises, getting the reps done as fast as you can.  If you want great abs, you need to slow down a little.  It would be better for you to do fewer reps at a slower pace, than it would to do several reps quickly.  When you perform the reps slowly, you should start to notice that your abs start to burn much faster.  This is a sign that you’re giving your abs a great workout.  


  • Focus on quality instead of quality when you’re working your abs.  You can do hundreds of crunches everyday and still not see results.  Why is this?  It’s usually because you’re not performing the exercise correctly.  You’re just speeding through, trying to do as many reps as possible.  If you take the time to really learn how to do the exercise correctly, you can do a lot less reps and see much better results.  You might want to start out only doing 10 reps of each exercise.  This way you can put all of your focus into doing the exercise correctly.  Once you get the correct form down, you can add in more reps and sets. 

As you can see, it really isn’t that hard to perform your exercises correctly.  You just have to listen to your body, remember to breathe, take your time, and focus on quality over quantity.  Once you start doing your exercises correctly, you should start to see more noticeable results in your abs.