Although you might be motivated to train your abs frequently, that’s not necessarily the best approach. Your muscles need a day, or more, of rest in between sessions in order to repair themselves. Lifting weights damages muscle fibers (creates microscopic tears in the muscles you’ve worked), so rest days give your muscles time to reconstruct, recover and increase in size.
Strive to do abdominal workouts 2-3 times a week. Your workouts shouldn’t be 20 minutes of nonstop crunches – you want to do a workout that involves your core in a variety of movements. (Check out my belly blasting workout for an example of a full-body, core-intensive workout.)
Remember: eating a balanced, healthy diet coupled with working out will give you the best shot at seeing definition in your abdominal muscles. What you eat has the biggest impact on the size of your belly. You can do 100 crunches a day and still not see any progress. You might strengthen your core, but if you have fat on top of your muscles, it will be hard to see the definition.
Here are a few workouts you can do to strengthen your core:
