Quick Abs Circuit for a Killer 6-Pack

Sculpt your abs in no time with this quick yet very challenging workout

Post includes lifestyle tips to sculpt your abs, different ways to use this workout effectively & all 4 moves in detail.

Sculpting a great set of abs shouldn’t be as difficult as you might be led to believe. The trick is to know what you need to do to get there, because you could do 6 million crunches & 10 hours of planks and not make any progress. In this post I’ll give you some excellent pointers to get there… and of course a great yet quick abs circuit for a killer 6-pack.

Before you get dead set on doing rounds of abs-building exercises like the workout below, make sure you’re in the right shape to be able to start showing them off first. Here’s a few quick pointers:

Your body fat percentage needs to be low:

You can do as many exercises as you like, but if your body fat percentage is too high, sadly your hard-built abs will be hiding away behind that stubborn fat on your belly. In all honesty this applies to your whole body. Reduce your body fat & your muscles will appear much more well-built & sculpted (even if you don’t have massive muscles at all). You can calculate your body fat percentage here. Aiming for somewhere between 12-15 percent should be a good starting point.

You can decrease your body fat by following 2 key principles:

1. Eat to ensure a slight calorific deficit every day: work out your daily maintenance calorie intake, then concoct an eating plan which falls just below this amount. By doing this and weighing yourself consistently, you’ll start to see your weight decrease while keeping good levels of energy and strength.
2. Burn off calories with exercise: Get yourself in your running shoes & out for a HIIT session, do lots of bodyweight circuit training, take your bicycle out for some spins, anything that will torch calories and therefore body fat. Or get clever with calorie burning by reading the next tip…

Incorporate training methods that support sustainable abs building:

This will fast-track your abs building program, especially if you’re combining different training elements to achieve multiple objectives at once. For example, smashing out plenty of circuit training sessions that incorporate abs exercises will start building up your abs nicely. And you’ll burn off loads of fat, which will save you months of hard graft.

Include exercises to work all of your ab muscles, not just the ones at the front:

This basically means you want to perform exercises to blitz each muscle set in your abs. There are certain moves that will train your upper abs, some that work your lower abs, and others that build up your obliques (side abs). Ensure you incorporate moves to work all of these muscles to start sculpting an all-round set of excellent abs.

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An effective abs workout can be done as a standalone session or bolted onto the end of one of your typical workouts. The good thing about these routines is they don’t have to be very long at all. Pick a challenging enough exercise, and perform it with proper form, and you should only need to do one exercise to target each area of your abs. That could be as little as 3 exercises if you’re targeting your upper abs, lower abs, and obliques.

So let’s have it then, the workout: Perform these moves one after the other in a circuit without rest in between, then once you’ve done them all, rest for a minute before repeating two more times.

Move 1 – Dragon Flags (5 reps)

This is a tough one so if you can’t manage this yet, build up to it here. Lie on your back with your legs straight and your hands holding onto something very sturdy (I’ve got a pair of handles drilled into the wall!). Keeping your legs straight, use your core to lift your hips, legs and feet off the floor and up until they’re nearly parallel with the wall behind you. Then lower back down until your legs & feet almost touch the floor, and repeat.

Move 2 – Lying Leg Raises (20 reps)

Lying on the floor facing up with straight legs, raise your legs off the floor until they’re at least 45 degrees up into the air, then lower back to the floor and repeat.

Move 3 – Weighted Crunches (12 reps)

Perform a crunch, but with the added challenge of holding a weight directly above you with your arms straight (I use a 12kg kettlebell). Make sure you don’t drop it though! Ensure you pull your upper torso up off the floor by contracting your abs, and not using your hips, to ensure you’re working the right muscles.

Move 4 – Dumbbell Russian Twist (10 reps each side)

Sitting on the floor, hold a dumbbell (once again I use a kettlebell) in front of your body. Bend your legs and raise your feet off the floor, and lean your body back about 45 degrees, so that you feel fairly balanced. Then, while keeping your head & torso looking forward, and without straightening your arms, move the weight to the left around your torso until it nearly touches the floor, and hold for a second if you can. Return to the starting position before moving down to the right in the same way. Then return to the start again, and repeat. That’s one rep.

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A quick abs-circuit for you to try, either as a speedy standalone workout or as part of a bigger workout session. Give it a try, and let me know what you think in the comments.