If the infomercials are any indication, people spend more money on their abs than on any other muscle group. And why wouldn’t they? Your abs play a role in nearly all of your movements.
Related: Learn These 3 Surprising Facts About Your Core To Get Rock Hard Abs
But you don’t need a credit card to reveal your abs. You need a smart diet – along with this boot camp workout, which will torch your belly fat and work your entire core. Are Abs still a mystery to you? Here’s a blueprint of your mid-section muscles.
1. Rectus Abdominis
The rectus abdominis – or the six-pack – is the best known ab muscle. Despite the nickname, it’s actually eight segments separated by dense connective tissue called fascia. By helping counteract the pull of the muscles that extend your lower back, the rectus abdominis helps your spine stay stable. Its other main duty is to pull your torso towards your hips.
Related: Shed Winter Flab With These Pro Trainers’ 8-Mınute Abs Workouts
2. Fascia
This tough tissue weaves in and around all your body’s muscles to create an interconnective web. In terms of your abs, it’s what separates and links each of the eight segments of your rectus abdominis, giving them their regimented appearance.
3. External Obliques
Running vertically and diagonally, these muscles originate at your rib cage and connect at your hip bone and linea alba (see ‘5’ below). They help bend your torso to the sides and rotate your torso to the left and right. Perhaps most importantly, they also act to prevent your torso from rotating.
Related: Try This Fat-Melting Core Workout For Washboard Abs
4. Internal Obliques
These lie beneath your external obliques. They assist in side-bending and rotating your torso, as well as in resisting rotation.
5. Linea Alba
This long strip of fascia forms a line of separation down the center of your abdominals. It helps prevent your rectus abdominis from being ripped apart by your obliques.
The Ab Workout Plan
So now that you know where everything is, get ripped abs now!
