My Morning Workout Routine for Rock Hard Abs and Flawless Flexibility
The above video is of quick workout routine that I love to do a few times per week in the morning. Ignore the icepack and piano music (I turned the workout video to pay homage to american pyscho). The purpose of the workout is to strengthen and build my core muscles and to maintain a high degree of flexibility throughout my body. Maintaining flexibility with the exercises from the video has totally eliminated my back pain.
Most of the exercises included in the video are extremely advanced and took me many months to progress to. However there are easier variations you can perform to still get a massive benefit.
Workout Routine for Abs and Flexibility
Exercise #1 – Front Levers x 5 reps
Front levers are a highly advanced gymnastic core exercise that will strengthen your entire core and lats. During front levers the entire midsection stays rigid. This effectively works your TVA muscle (transverse abdominals). A strong TVA protects your back from injury and keeps your stomach pulled in tight (no pushed out gut).
Here’s a video on how to progress to the front lever
Exercise #2 – Hanging Feet to Bar Leg Raises
Hanging feet to bar leg raises works the entire abdominal wall from top to bottom. By bringing your legs all the way up to the bar you engage the upper abdominals to a much higher degree then if you were to stop at 90 degrees. This movement requires strong lats as you must contract your lats very hard to assist bringing your feet to the bar. As your abs fatigue you will notice you start to use your lats even more (your lats work to pull your body parallel to the ground so its easier to raise your legs up). Ideally you want to focus on using your abs and less lats.
You can build up to feet to bar hanging leg raises by starting with your legs bent and crossed together. As your abs become stronger you can straighten out your legs more and more until your legs are perfectly straight.
Exercise #3 – Swinging Side to Side Bent Knee Ups
Swinging side to side bent knee ups are one of my favourite abs exercises. It destroys my abs every time and it also really develops the V CUT (the muscle that goes from the sides of your lower abs down to your package). How to get V Abs Article
This movement works very well with high repetitions (20-50 total reps = 10-30 per side).
Exercise #4 – Stand to Stand Back Bridge
The stand to stand bridge is one of my favourite exercises. This exercise has cured my back pain and increased my height by a full inch. You can read an entire article on it here – //kinobody.com/1066/stand-to-stand-bridge-tutorial/
Exercise #5 – L sit (on finger tips)
The L sit is a tremendous exercise that requires a ton of core strength, flexibility and upper body strength. You can make the exercise even more challenging by doing it on your finger tips (I built up to this by performing push ups on my finger tips). I recommend practicing the L sit between two chairs that way you can keep your legs a little bit lower then parallel. Another great way to do them is on your knuckles – this really toughens up your hands and wrists (great for fighters). As well it keeps your butt higher off the ground so you can have a little more slack in your upper body and shoulders then if you were to do them on your hands. The back bridge stretches all the muscles on your front of your body and the L sit sufficiently stretches all the muscles on the back side of the body.
Exercise #6 – Twisting Stretch Exercise
The final exercise I perform is an advanced twisting stretch exercise. This exercise stretches your body in a rotational manner. By performing the bridge, l sit and twisting stretch you have addressed flexibility amongst your entire body. If you are very flexible then you can slide your arm through your leg and grab your hand behind your back. I’m still working on this.
The Workout Sequence
Circuit #1 – perform 3x
front levers x 5
hanging leg raises x 5
side to side bent knee ups x 10 per side (20 total)
Back Bridge x 10 second hold or 10 stand to stand
Circuit #2 – complete 3x
L Sit Hold x 10-15 seconds
Twisting Stretch x 15 seconds per side
Final Notes
I perform this a few times per week in the morning. In addition to strengthening my core and increasing my flexibility it is also pretty damn bad ass. I hope to have my own bodyweight strength training course in the future. We’ll see.
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I can stop swinging when I don’t get al the way down so you said that I shouldn’t get it all the way down to get all Time tension(hanging leg raises feet to bar)
Hey Greg,
Are there any other stretches you might include in addition to the Trifecta?
The trifecta pretty much nails it all. But you can incorporate more stretches if you want. I like to do a squat stand. Or simply just hold the bottom of a squat. You can do a hip flexor stretch (though the bridge pretty much nails it). And you can do toe touches for the hamstrings.
Hi Greg,
Appreciate your hard work and research.
I have a quick question, i just bought your Aggressive fat loss diet and i am afraid
of something which is the flabby stomach which i already have :(
can you please advise what to do regarding this issue.
Thanks Man.
The aggressive fat loss program will help address this issue. If you lose fat, you will get rid of your flabby stomach.
Hey greg quick question! Would you reccomend doing this circuit the same day as I lift or in between my 3 day lift sessions on my rest days. I was just curious because I thought it might be more beneficial to have a full restday day of not going to the gym at all as oppose to going in for a quick ab session. Thanks in advance buddy!
Either will be fine. It’s not too intense so it can be done on a rest day. Although I don’t actually do this circuit as a part of my routine. It was just a fun circuit to have fun with. You can also do it at the end of your workout.
Greg,
I just started doing the Greek God program and didn’t notice an ab component.
When should I do this ab program?
Tim
Look in the frequently asked questions section
Love this, and how you spelled out how to progress! Stuff like this is awesome to shoot for instead of watching for the scale to go down for motivation. My question: as a girl, can I expect to be able to do this routine at some point if I work up to it? Knowing that mens upper body strength is naturally more than a women’s.
It’s definitely possible. The front levers will be the hardest to achieve. Everything else is very doable. Maybe do the L sit on a pair of bars instead of fingertips.
Thank you! Also, is this something I can just get up and do first thing in the morning, or do I need to a warm up routine first?
You’re probably best off warming up a little first.
I was wondering if your “morning workout routine for rock hard abs and flawless flexibility” is a good complete workout routine if I do it a couple times a week. For example will it help to strengthen the whole midsection, ie. obliques, TVA’s, and upper and lower abs?
Yes it is!
Hey greg just curious, I am 5’7 150lbs around 9-10% body fat maybe less, but my question is my goal is to make my abs bigger and more deep so to attain this goal would I have to eat more because I am currently eating maintenance calories and abs are just like any muscle so to make them bigger would I just eat at a calorie surplus to make abs bigger?
No don’t eat at a surplus to make your bas bigger. Eat around maintenance and hit your abs consistently a few times per week. Get strong on hanging leg raises and abs roll outs. You can’t eat your way up to big abs.
OK thanks greg, been following your site since like the start and it is amazing to see how far you have come. Keep it up and I never said thank you for helping me reach the kinobody life style!
Thanks Chris! Great to have a long term follower.
Hi Greg,
This may not be very high up on your priority list but I just wondered if you could do an Abs routine
which requires absolutely nothing. Literally, just you and the floor. Cause I’m out injured at the moment for quite a while, all i can do is running and abs and so i don’t want to travel all the way to the gym just to do an ab routine. The one’s i have tried already off Youtube really suck! Again, I don’t expect anything, but I’m just putting it out there, thanks.
Hi Greg,
Very nice workout! Thxs for sharing.
I’d be interested to know what the brand of you workout cage is? I’m currently looking around to buy something similar and this one looks very nice :)
@Lennert.
It looks quite nice but its a pice of crap. Some of the holes aren’t even lined up right. I just bought the cheapest one that seemed professional. I guess you get what you pay for.
I’m currently working on developing the Stand to Stand bridge – absolutely insane for improving spinal flexibility (and eliminating back pain). Nice morning routine!
Excellent routine and great tribute to American Psycho as well!
ONE word; FUCKINGAWESOME!
Yo Greg. As always great job. It looks extremely hard though and you must be pretty badass to do this workout lol. And I was suprised to find that you dont have a Ryan Reynolds workout because he has the what is said to be one of the best male bodies. Anyways look forward to your next post :)
Thanks for the informative post. I am looking forward to your potential body weight strength training course.
Speaking of bodyweight exercises – what do you think of the routines over at Bodyrock.tv?
Thanks again for the great work. Your posts have renewed my interest in working out and have refined how I do so.
Nice post Greg. I see how your abs got so amazing and stayed that way. And I just saw somewhere your site is worth $4242 lol shows what good job youve been doing. Anyways this gives me an excersise to do for my abs during the shrink wrap effect :)
Hey Greg ! I was wondering ,during the time before and after you did bridges and learned how to do it like you do in this video, did your torso get longer? Reason being why is becuase I dont wanna be/have a guy that has the short and wide torso look so I was wondering if this could help my spine to lenghten it up a bit?
@Josh
Yah I think I gained an inch maybe.
Greg,
This looks like an awesome abs routine. I love the American Psycho theme! One of my favorite movies. Christian Bale had some pretty impressive abs in that role.
Alykhan