People more often than not forget their abs are just regular muscles, and to make them bigger, need only to be trained as any other muscle. The weighted crunch exercise is far more effective for building deep cut abs than regular crunches just as the bench press is far more effective for building muscles than the push up.
Abdominals do not require daily work like some people would have you believe. In fact this is strongly discouraged. You should treat the abdominals just as you would any other muscle; work them only once every 72 hours so the muscles can recover.
I recommend performing the weighted crunch with 10 to 15 repetitions split into sets of 3 to 5.
Here is how to safely perform the weighted crunch…
- Set yourself up as you would to do regular crunches, with your feet tucked inwards or raised up on a bench or platform of some kind.
- Rather than have your hands behind your heads, hold a weight plate on your upper chest
- keeping the small of your back firmly on the floor, crunch upwards as hard and as far as you can.
- Hold the position for a moment, and then very slowly return to the floor.
Again, the simple rules of building muscle apply to the abs. This means as you wish your abs to become deeper and more defined you will need to begin using heavier and heavier plates.