By Elena Voropay 

Want to see better ab definition? No spot reducing here, you know it doesn't work. But training your abs will surely help. If you worked them out religiously without any visible results, you must have been doing something wrong. Tell you what - follow these techniques and your eight-pack is guaranteed. First of, work your abs like any other body part - 2 to 3 times a week. Training them more than once or twice per week is unnecessary.

More is not necessarily better. It's that same principle again and again - quality vs. quantity. And no matter what body part you train, or what your ultimate fitness goal is, you may end up spending a lot of time and effort on completing the planned workout, but you fail to achieve the results you are seeking.

The reason is that you may become very inefficient at training your abs due to continuous repetitive overload without sufficient rest and enough time left for recuperation.

Training your abs every day may have some merrit it you are at advanced stage, where you can actually see and feel your washboard. But for the rest of us, I recomment training hard, powerfully and slowly pushing to the limit, and then letting the work you've done work for you.

The number of repetitions is not as relevant as the actual performance technique. If it takes you 100 crunches before your abs begin to burn, then you are wasting your time. Your abs should be fatigued at no more than 20-25 reps. If they are aren't, you need to add weights to your exercise and work on contracting the muscles tightly for each rep. Don't concentrate so much on "how many" you can do, but instead focus on "how hard" you can contract the abdominal muscles.

Contrary to popular belief (another myth), doing full sit-ups, lying leg raises or hanging leg raises DOES NOT give your abdominals the best workout. In fact, these exercises work your hip flexor muscles (psoas major) much more than your abs! Remember, the most effective exercises for working the abs must involve a "scrunching" type contraction, like an accordion.