An Ab Workout From Kris Grethin and Team Grenade

A few years back bodybuilding.com posted a video that saw Team Grenade put bodybuilders Kris Grethin through his paces. The workout was highly creative and challenging and is one that anyone can use to develop their abs for rock hard toughness and great strength and stability. If you want to get your stomach cut, then this is one of the very best routines out there still. Ready to give it a go?

Exercise 1
Decline Bench Press Overhead Barbell Sit Up

The workout starts with something you might not have seen before – a sit up on the decline bench press while holding a bar above your head throughout the movement. The bar doesn’t have to have any weight on it to begin with, but you’ll be adding more to it as you go.

This exercise is excellent for building ab strength for a number of reasons. For starters it’s quite unique and there’s a good chance you won’t have done it before – always a huge bonus for any exercise. Secondly, the decline nature means you’ll have a greater range of motion to train the entire abs. Finally, the bar of course ads extra resistance. Use several sets and as you get further, try increasing the weight to add even more challenge.

Exercise 2
Hanging Windmills

The name ‘windmills’ can refer to a number of different leg exercises, but in this case they are describing an exercise performed while hanging from the bar. Here you will move your legs slowly round in a circle as though they were a windmill. This is great not only for your lower abs but also your obliques.

Exercise 3
Toe-to-Bar Leg Raises

Toe-to-bar raises involve again hanging from a pull up bar, and this time keeping your legs straight and bringing them directly upwards to touch your toes to the top of the bar. This is a very tough workout for your entire rectus abdominis, but if you can’t do it you can just bring your knees up to your chest instead which is considerably easier.

Exercise 4
Hanging Sit Ups

Now using some gravity boots/ankle loops, you’re going to hang upside down from a pull up bar or from a squatting rack and then you’re going to perform sit ups from that angle. This downward angle will increase the gravitational force you’re pulling against while at the same time challenging yourself with quite a unique technique. Do be sure to get down though if you feel yourself getting light headed! Conversely, if it’s too easy, then you can try holding a weight plate and then bringing this up with you each time you perform a repetition.

Exercise 5
Plank

Team Grenade aren’t just interested in regular plank, but instead recommend moving into different positions and holding each one for thirty seconds. In the video they use normal plank, they raise their bodies and lower them and they balance on just one side using their forearms (making sure to do both).

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