Six Pack Abs Workout Plan for Beginners

About this plan

Two sessions a week, sixteen different ab exercises between them, and nothing to buy. This is a first ab plan: the movements are simple, the range is short, and none of them ask you to hold your breath and heave.

Day one runs dead bugs, chest-crossed crunches, knee-touch crunches, lying leg raises, a beginner side plank, a front plank, alternate heel touches and tuck crunches. Day two takes the same jobs from different angles — straight-leg dead bugs, long-arm crunches, reverse crunches, seated leg raises, a bent-leg side bridge, kneeling plank, ab tucks and lying toe touches.

The split behind it is worth knowing. Dead bugs, planks and side planks train the core to resist movement; crunches, leg raises and toe touches train it to produce movement. Most ab routines are all of the second kind, which is why they build a midsection that looks trained but does not hold position under a heavy squat.

Now the part most six-pack articles skip. You cannot crunch a six-pack into existence. Abdominal muscles become visible at a low enough body fat percentage, and body fat comes off through what you eat and how much you move overall, not through the exercises on this page. What this plan does is build the muscle that becomes visible when the fat comes off, and strengthen the trunk that everything else depends on. Both are worth doing regardless of what your midsection looks like.

Progress by adding time before adding reps. A plank held for forty controlled seconds beats sixty seconds with a sagging hip, and the leg raise gets harder if you lower over three seconds rather than dropping. When a set stops being difficult, straighten your legs, slow the lowering phase, or move your hands further from your hips.

Two days a week is enough for direct ab work. The core is already working in every squat, carry and press you do — training it hard six days a week mostly buys soreness.