I am planning on switching to Arnold’s “Level 1 Beginners exercise program.” It comes from the book “Arnold Schwarzenegger, The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding”.
The program calls for crunches 6 days a week
Day #1 25x5 Crunches
Day #2 25x5 Reverse Crunches
Day #3 25x5 Crunches
Etc…
Is this totally crazy, or would your body be able to get stronger despite the lack of repair time.
From my own anecdotal experience…light weight high rep shit with small muscle groups (i.e. abs, calves) can be done every day.
[quote]unearth wrote:
From my own anecdotal experience…light weight high rep shit with small muscle groups (i.e. abs, calves) can be done every day.[/quote]
yeah u can do stuff like that on small muscle groups. people reserve it for lagging muscle groups though
Lol - it’s for beginners.
I think it’s insane, but I also think you should try it. You’ll never know until you do.
I think you’ll end up with a big gut, but go for it. You sound young you can afford it.
[quote]pat36 wrote:
I think you’ll end up with a big gut, but go for it. You sound young you can afford it.[/quote]
A big muscular gut covered by a big layer of flab? 
[quote]unearth wrote:
From my own anecdotal experience…light weight high rep shit with small muscle groups (i.e. abs, calves) can be done every day.[/quote]
Is this usually met with success?
Thanks for your response.
[quote]Sxio wrote:
Lol - it’s for beginners.
I think it’s insane, but I also think you should try it. You’ll never know until you do. [/quote]
Yah, I think it is insane too. When I work my abs really hard, I have doms for days usually. When I try to crunch my stomach it hurts like hell, and a really odd hurt.
When you get used to it you’ll be fine… but the first two weeks or so will fucking suck.
I think you will be surprised at how quickly that routine becomes easy.
The flaw is that it is the same number of reps, with the same weight (your bodyweight), repeated over and over… Therefore your muscles will adapt and increase in strength/size to compensate to that stimulus, but then stop.
So go ahead, it won’t hurt you, you won’t develop a big gut. The trick is, after it gets easy and you have adapted to it, get a more difficult routine. When the routine is really, really difficult, your body may require additional days rest.
However, it’s general consensus (mostly), that you can train abs A LOT.
CT, (whose routines you might want to try after you get through with being a beginner) advocates a much more intense routine for abs in a lot of his workouts, and abs are worked 7 days a week.
Personally, I’ve been gradually increasing my volume and intesity of core training over the last year and am now doing 4 days a week very intense, plus 2 lighter days.
(edit)
perhaps i should note that the 15 years of training previously, I have never improved my abs as well as in the last year: and the reason is that I am increasing output with every workout.
[quote]DanErickson wrote:
Is this usually met with success?
Thanks for your response.[/quote]
Define success.
What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish?
It is easily possible for humans to do light weight high rep (i.e. sit-ups, toe raises, walking, etc.) work every day. Whether such training will help you reach your goals or not depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Personally, I use ab work as a warm-up to every workout I do (I lift four days a week).
[quote]unearth wrote:
DanErickson wrote:
Is this usually met with success?
Thanks for your response.
Define success.
What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish?
It is easily possible for humans to do light weight high rep (i.e. sit-ups, toe raises, walking, etc.) work every day. Whether such training will help you reach your goals or not depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Personally, I use ab work as a warm-up to every workout I do (I lift four days a week).[/quote]
My long term goal is to build a good frame of solid muscle, so I don’t know, gain 20 or 30 pounds of muscle and try to cut my bodyfat down to 10% and maintain it.
[quote]DanErickson wrote:
My long term goal is to build a good frame of solid muscle, so I don’t know, gain 20 or 30 pounds of muscle and try to cut my bodyfat down to 10% and maintain it.
[/quote]
Whether you do sit-ups every day or not probably won’t make much of a difference to your goals IMO.
You’re overly worried about a fine detail.
Thank you for everybody’s responses.
When I was a little fat kid, at the age of 12, I did 300 crunches a day in the belief that it would give me a ‘killer six pack’.
I actually lost a fair bit of weight, due to the fact that I had been otherwise completely sedentary. Of course I had no idea that spot reduction didn’t work so I lost interest after six months and didn’t see my abs until years later.
Long term repercussions: my abs are still one of my most developed body parts. This is good when I have low body fat because they look decent. However as soon as they’re covered with any bulk fat people think that I have a huge gut.
Also, I’m still stretching the fuck out of my hip flexors on a daily basis as well as hammering my posterior chain in order to correct my lordosis.
My advice to you; if you are doing crunches every day, balance them out with sufficient work on the lower back and hams. Better still, do standing ab work instead of the crunches too.
I only work my abs 3 times a week at tae kwon do. I never do direct ab work otherwise.
My abs are okay but my bf% is rarely low enough to see them. I don’t think you really need to train them much at all if you’re keeping proper posture on your other exercises.
I only do ab work at all because I’m forced too at training.
[quote]jarvis wrote:
My advice to you; if you are doing crunches every day, balance them out with sufficient work on the lower back and hams. Better still, do standing ab work instead of the crunches too. [/quote]
Deadlifts are done twice a week, as well as good mornings and stiff legged deadlifts. Would that be enough?