Exercise to tighten up the abs

Everyone wants them flat sexy abs and most people can realistically achieve something close to that. There are really three factors that you have to consider.  They are diet, exercise, and genetics. Let’s start with the least important of the three, genetics. Whether or not you have good genetics does make a difference. For example look at a any professional bodybuilder. Most people can get big but only a few can get that truly muscled and ripped look The same holds true here. Most people can have good abs but not everyone will be able to have that really defined six pack.  Next is nutrition. In order to have good abs you have to have a low body fat percentage. You can do all the abdominal exercises in the world but they are useless unless you can see you abdominal muscles. So one of the first thing to do to get them great abs is to get your body fat percentage down but that can be discussed in a different article. So now let’s get to what the article is about.
 There are many exercises one can do to tighten their abs. If you had to guess the most popular what would you say? Situps? Wrong! While situps do work your abs slightly they are mostly a hip exercise. So what exercises to do? The basic exercises you should do are something to hit your “upper”, “lower”, and oblique’s (your love handles).
 The best exercises for your upper abs are a crunch variation. You can do regular on the ground crunches or you can do something harder. Now keep in mind the harder exercises will produce better results. So with that in mind you can do either a weighted crunch using a rope and a pulley or grab two dumbbells and do a crunch on a medicine ball. To do your crunch on a pulley you simple kneel down facing the machine and do a crunch focusing on squeezing your abdominals.
The best lower abdominal exercise are leg raises. You can do these laying on the ground with straight legs and raising them up to a 90 degree angle. Once these become too easy add ankle weights and do them to increase the resistance. However, a better and harder alternative to that are to do hanging leg raises. To do these you simple hang from a bar and bring your knees up near your chest squeezing your abdominals. Same thing here once these become easy add weight (either ankle weights or hold a db between your feet).
To hit your oblique’s you should do a type of twisting movement. So your will grab a dumbbell and hold it with two hands like your are holding a can in front of you. You will lay down and hook your feet under something. You will then crunch up about 45 degrees and stay there. You will then turn to one side and just about touch that elbow to the ground and then do the same thing on the other side.
 Now keep in mind when training your abs like any other body part you want to keep your repetitions between 6 and 12 . Once you hit 12 increase your weight.