4 Weeks for A Flatter Stomach and Stronger Core
First things first- you can’t spot reduce fat.
Now that we got that out of the way, the good news is that working on your core will make your stomach appear thinner and also improve your overall quality of life!
When it comes to getting fully visible abs or actually flattening your stomach, nutrition should always be your top priority. Remember, you can’t outwork a bad diet.
This 4-week program is designed to get your core and stomach in tip-top shape with the help of strength and cardio-based training sessions!
What Is the Core?
The core doesn’t only include abdominal muscles. It’s actually a very complex system including hip, back, glute, abdominal, pelvic, and diaphragm muscles.
This program will primarily focus on the abdominals, with some minor attention given to the hip, glute, back, diaphragm, and pelvic muscles.
The abdominal themselves are a complex system of interconnected muscles consisting of:
- External and internal obliques: they work together to resist and provide rotation in the trunk.
- Transversus abdominis: the deepest abdominal muscle, it literally wraps the entire trunk from front to back. They provide rotation and keep our trunk stable.
- Rectus abdominis: the muscle that gives us a 6-pack look. It basically consists of two muscles that are separated by connective tissue (linea alba.) They provide trunk flexion and anti-extension, along with stability.
The Benefits of a Strong Core
As a result of our modern lifestyles, filled with a lot of sitting and inactivity, our abdominal muscles tend to be really weak.
This can cause many problems, like low-back pain, incorrect posture, and even migraines.
Our abdominals help support and stabilize the spine, so it’s safe to say that they are really important in keeping our spine healthy!
Working on your core stability can be detrimental, especially as you age.
A strong and stable core may prevent you from falling when you’re older, indirectly preventing you from breaking your bones and increasing the quality and length of your life.
A strong core also carries over to every single physically demanding thing you may do, from lifting heavy weights in the gym to giving birth!
A Quick Nutrition Guide for Getting a Flat Stomach
As I previously said, you can’t outwork a bad diet.
Therefore, we must go through a couple of principles in order to make your stomach-flattening journey as easy as possible.
Calculate The Calories Needed for Weight Maintenance
You can do this with basically any online calorie calculator.
Different calculators may not agree 100%, but finding your maintenance at a given body weight will be trial and error either way.
You will use this number as a baseline.
Calculate The Calories Needed for Weight Loss
Take the maintenance calories and subtract 200 to 400 calories.
This isn’t a massive deficit and will allow you to continuously lose weight without feeling like you’re in shackles.
Get A Kitchen Scale & Roughly Track Your Calories
You can hit what you can’t see; therefore, you must track your macros and calories.
Theoretically, you can lose weight by just being in a caloric deficit, but eating the correct ratio of macronutrients is advised.
Try to get around 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
Subtract that number of calories from the calories needed to lose weight, and allocate the remaining calories to carbs and fats. We advise you to start with a 70:30 or 60:40 calorie ratio, favoring carbs.
If these ratios don’t suite you, feel free to experiment and find the one that does.
Of course, this ratio is calculated with the remaining calories after subtracting the protein, not your entire goal for the day.
Track and Readjust
Track your weight a few times a week, ideally as soon as you wake up and before eating anything.
Your weight may fluctuate up and down, but you should see a clear downward trend after a few weeks.
Everyone is different, so it’s perfectly normal that the online calculator you used to get your maintenance calories was a bit wrong, and you’re not losing as much weight as you’d like.
If that may be the case, just lower your current calories by another 200 calories.
If the problem persists, do it again.
THE PROGRAM
This program actually features two 4-week programs: one for beginners and one for advanced people with a bit more training experience.
If you’re ready, you can continue doing the advanced program after finishing the beginner one.
If not, continue doing the beginner program until you get strong enough for the advanced version.
Both programs are structured in the same way: every week will consist of 3 ab workouts, of which two will be strength-based sessions, and one will be a circuit-cardio-type session.
Mondays and Fridays are reserved for strength workouts.
You must complete all sets of a given exercise before moving on to the next one.
Wednesdays are circuit days and they are obviously completed in a circuit fashion, which you can complete along with the workout videos.
Beginner Program
Week 1
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Beginner | |||
| WEEK 1 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 2 | 12/12 | 1 min |
| Hip Raise | 2 | 12 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Mountain Climbers | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Plank Hip Dip | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Alternating Reverse Crunch | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Bicycle | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 2 | 12/12 | 1 min |
| Hip Raise | 2 | 12 | 1 min |
Week 2
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Beginner | |||
| WEEK 2 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Reverse Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Bent Knees Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Spider Plank | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Mountain Climbers | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Russian Twist | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| Flutter Kicks | 2 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 2 | 30s | 1 min |
| Reverse Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Bent Knees Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
Week 3
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Beginner | |||
| WEEK 3 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank R | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Leg Raise | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Reverse Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Mountain Climbers | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Plank Hip Dip | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Alternating Reverse Crunch | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Bicycle | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank R | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 3 | 30s | 1 min |
| Leg Raise | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Reverse Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
Week 4
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Beginner | |||
| WEEK 4 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank Dip R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Leg Raise | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Beginner V-Ups | 3 | 15 | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 3 | 12/12 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Spider Plank | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Mountain Climbers | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Russian Twist | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Flutter Kicks | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank Dip R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Leg Raise | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Beginner V-Ups | 3 | 15 | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 3 | 12/12 | 1 min |
Advanced Program
Week 1
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Advanced | |||
| WEEK 1 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Leg Raises | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Heel Taps | 3 | 20/20 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Mountain Climbers | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Plank Hip Dip | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Alternating Reverse Crunch | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Bicycle | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Plank | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Side Plank R | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Side Plank L | 3 | 45s | 1 min |
| Leg Raises | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Heel Taps | 3 | 20/20 | 1 min |
Week 2
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Advanced | |||
| WEEK 2 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Shoulder Taps | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Windshield Wipers | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Spider Plank | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Mountain Climbers | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Russian Twist | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| Flutter Kicks | 3 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Shoulder Taps | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Dip L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Windshield Wipers | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |
Week 3
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Advanced | |||
| WEEK 3 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank Hip Dip Leg Lift R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Hip Dip Leg Lift L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Beginner V-Ups | 3 | 15 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Mountain Climbers | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Plank Hip Dip | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Alternating Reverse Crunch | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Bicycle | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Side Plank Hip Dip Leg Lift R | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Side Plank Hip Dip Leg Lift L | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Beginner V-Ups | 3 | 15 | 1 min |
| Toe Touch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
| Oblique Crunch | 3 | 12 | 1 min |
Week 4
| Flat and Strong Abs | |||
| Advanced | |||
| WEEK 4 | |||
| MONDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Oblique Leg Raises | 3 | 5/5 | 1 min |
| Starfish Crunch | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Windshield Wipers | 3 | 5/5 | 1 min |
| Alternating Toe Touch | 3 | 6/6 | 1 min |
| Shoulder Taps | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |
| WEDNESDAY CIRCUIT | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Spider Plank | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Mountain Climbers | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Criss Cross | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Russian Twist | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| Flutter Kicks | 4 | 30s | 5s |
| 2 min | |||
| FRIDAY | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Oblique Leg Raises | 3 | 5/5 | 1 min |
| Starfish Crunch | 3 | 10 | 1 min |
| Windshield Wipers | 3 | 5/5 | 1 min |
| Alternating Toe Touch | 3 | 6/6 | 1 min |
| Shoulder Taps | 3 | 10/10 | 1 min |