5 Exercises to Get a FLAT BELLY in Just 30 Minutes

Check out my client Sandy’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.

I bet you’re aware that you can’t Target fat burn, meaning you can’t just burn fat from only your belly area

but I also bet that you didn’t know that you have certain abdominal muscles specifically responsible for pulling your stomach in and giving you that flat stomach look.

In today’s video, I want to share these five exercises that are gonna get you a flat stomach in the quickest time possible.

Over the last 10 years of being a personal trainer and working with tons of clients, I’ve been able to test these exercises out quite a bit so I know they work you just have to make sure that you’re consistent.

The reason why these exercises work is because they take advantage of the function of the deepest layer abdominal muscle that most people don’t even know about.

This deep layer of muscle tissue is known as the transverse abdominis and it wraps around your torso creating a kind of corset effect.

Now the transverse abdominis has absolutely nothing to do with a six-pack. Your six pack ab muscle is known as the rectus abdominis which is the outer layer of your abs.

You see plenty of bodybuilders with six-pack abs on top of full out belly. There are a lot of causes of this but this helps illustrate that six-pack abs and a flat stomach isn’t the same thing.

So now that we know the goal is to work the transverse abdominis I want to give you the best exercises to blast this muscle in just 30 minutes.

Some of these exercises are gonna specifically Target your transverse abdominis and others will be compound exercises targeting multiple muscle groups.

1. The first exercise is the standing overhead barbell squat. I know you were not expecting that one.

You’re Expecting for me to tell you to get on the ground and start doing some crunches, weren’t you?

However by far one of the best ways to work your transverse abdominis is with overhead barbell squats.

By holding a weight over your head and having to squat down while maintaining good form you’re gonna have to recruit a lot of your deep later abdominal muscles to stabilize that movement.

Remember that the transverse abdominis muscle’s primary function is to stabilize the spine so pretty much any kind of overhead weight bearing movement is going to do wonders for this muscle.

Now if you’ve never done this exercise before you definitely don’t want to just grab a barbell and hold it over your head and start squatting away, especially if you don’t have experience with regular squats.

For starters just use a broomstick over your head….. that is literally all you need when first starting out.

Obviously, overtime progress the weight but before you progress you have to make sure that you’re doing the exercise correctly.

Hold the broomstick directly over your head and stick your head through your arms and the broomstick as if you’re peeking out a window.

Your hands should be directly over the line of your shoulder and at certain points, it’ll even feel like they’re behind your shoulders.

When you squat down sit your butt back, stay on your heels and keep your knees from passing too far over your toes.

 Let’s move on to the next exercise but before I do…please do not dismiss overhead squats.

It actually bothers me that I haven’t mentioned this exercise much before because overhead squats exemplify the meaning of core strength training.

2. Moving on the next exercise is one that you guys all know the plank but as soon as you can I want you to start progressing this exercise with weights.

It’s very important that when you’re doing planks that your body positioning and your weight positioning is correct.

So it’s part of body positioning you want your shoulders directly over your elbows you don’t want to be too far forward or too far back.

You also want your hips to be neutral in a straight line so they shouldn’t be sagging down to the ground and your butt shouldn’t be in the air as if you’re doing a downward dog.

The rest is pretty simple you just hold it for I recommend at least one minute but if you can’t do one minute do as much as you can and work your way up.

Now once you add weight you don’t want the weight too high on your back because then it’s just going to be supported by your arms.

You also don’t want it too low because then your legs will be doing all the work. You want the weight to be sitting pretty much between the bottom of your butt and the arch of your lower back.

3. For the next exercise, we have another overhead movement. The overhead barbell or dumbbell press, believe it or not, is another excellent way to work the transverse abdominis.

You would grab the barbell or the dumbbells and press straight over the line of your shoulder over your head.

When you come to the top again you want to look through the imaginary window created by your arms and the bar.

Do your best to keep your core tight and not Arc your lower back. If you feel too much pressure on your lower back lower the weight load.

Seated overhead presses without back support… so sitting upright on a flat bench for example that will also work the transverse abdominis.

4. The next exercise you’re going to want to do is the stability ball crunch. Again since the main purpose of the transverse abdominis is spinal stability the stability ball is going to help you challenge that stability.

to do this exercise you want to take a seat on the ball and roll your butt down as you walk your feet forward.

Make sure that the Arc of your lower back is on the ball while your shoulder blades are still hanging off the ball.

Lower yourself with your hands touching the sides of your head and your chin up towards the ceiling until you’re back Bends over the ball and then come back up.

Remember we’re aiming for a crunch, not a sit-up so stop at around 60 degrees and go right back down to keep the tension on your abs.

You can progress in this exercise by adding weight behind your head to make it more challenging when you’re ready.

5. For the last exercise, we have one that looks ridiculously simple, but if you do it at the end of your ab workout it’ll definitely be effective.

Also if your core is weak you can do this exercise first to activate your deep layer abdominal muscle fibers.This one is called the drawing in maneuver, but there are a bunch of ways to do this and most of them are ineffective and wrong.

The way to effectively do this is by getting on all fours with your weight evenly distributed between your hands and your knees.

A lot of drawing in maneuvers are done laying flat on your back, but what this does is it creates a form of resistance in the movement.

By being on all fours your stomach is getting pulled to the ground by gravity which will act as resistance for the entire movement.

To do this movement you want to draw your belly button and your abs in, hold for 5 to 20 seconds and then expand them back out.

Now if you combine all of these exercises into one flat stomach workout and superset it correctly, you will get this whole thing done in just 30 minutes.

A superset just means that you’re doing to sets of different exercises back to back with no break. So I want you to superset overhead squats with, the drawing in a maneuver.

Which means you would do 10 reps of overhead squats immediately followed by 10 reps of the drawing in maneuver and then take a 1 – 2-minute break. Then repeat for 3 sets.

Same thing with overhead barbell presses you would superset with planks. And then finally finish off with three sets of weighted crunches on the stability ball.

In total with breaks, this should just take 30 minutes. Also, you can just sprinkle these exercises into your routinerather than just doing them all in one day as one workout.that about wraps it up, I really hope these tips have helped you guys out.