In pursuit of cubes: why you shouldn’t pump abs every day

In pursuit of cubes: why you shouldn’t pump abs every day

This is the case when excessive zeal does not help the cause.

Due to its simplicity and effectiveness, twisting on the abs is one of the most common exercises. With regular training, the result is assured – you just need to be patient and practice. However, many people try to speed up the process of appearance of the cherished cubes, intensively pumping the abs in a daily regime.
Does this approach really help to achieve results faster or can continuous training lead to unpleasant consequences?
Let’s find out what happens if you pump your abs every day.

What is the danger of overtraining?

Any load should be dosed. During training, microtraumas occur in muscle fibers, which take time to heal. It is during the recovery process that muscle volume increases. If you do not give your muscles the necessary time to overcome the consequences of microtraumas, there is a high risk of overtraining. This condition occurs when cells do not have time to adapt to loads, biochemical processes are disturbed, immunity decreases and the central nervous system becomes overstressed.

Overtraining leads to a decrease in the effectiveness of training, slow progress or even a setback from the achieved results. Continuing to train in this state is not only useless, but also dangerous for health, as fatigue accumulates in the body against the background of chronic under-recovery.

How long does it take to restore the abs muscles?

So, asking the question, whether you can pump the press every day, you need to understand how much time is required for the muscles to assimilate the resulting load. It is a common belief that because of its small size, the abs need less time to recover than the muscles of the back or legs. However, most experts call such beliefs a myth, because the biochemical composition of the abs is not different from other muscles. In addition, the abdominal muscles are involved in many exercises for other parts of the body, so the load on them is increased.

On average, it takes 48 hours for the muscles to recover after physical activity. But in each specific case, these indicators vary, because they depend on the intensity and duration of training.

How often can you train your abs?

• Strength training on the abs using large weights for people of primary and intermediate level of training is recommended twice a week.
• Long endurance workouts with a high number of repetitions can be performed 3-4 times a week.
• Individual abs exercises without additional weights and a large number of repetitions can be done more often, but experts still recommend resting the muscles once every three days.

Thus, full-fledged press workouts should not be done more than four times a week, because the muscles will not have time to digest the load, and the path to the desired result will become much more difficult. In the standard for morning exercises twisting on the press, the load on the abdominal muscles is not so high, but these exercises should not be performed every day.

The desire to pump the abs as often as possible can be explained by the desire to see the results of work on yourself as soon as possible, but performing abdominal exercises every day is fraught with injuries, fatigue and muscle regression.