Lifestyle

How To Get Perfect Abs, According To The Kardashians' Personal Trainer

by Taylor Casey
Gunnar Peterson

Summer is just around the corner, which means plenty of excuses to show off that midsection.

To make sure we get it tight and right, Elite Daily called up The Kardashians' trainer, Gunnar Peterson, who shared tips to getting summer body ready, which he admits means "starting in winter."

But for those of you who have been slacking, fear not, the fitness enthusiast - who did his interview while also getting in his morning workout on the bike - spilled on his top ab exercises and what you need to do to tone that tummy.

Gunnar, who has been a personal trainer for 27 years, has a roster of celebrity clients, including Jennifer Lopez, Sofia Vergara, and the Kardashians, admits his training process is "always evolving."

He prides himself in always "maintaining a constant state of flux" when it comes to working out, using various exercise movements with a combination of strength and resistance training.

Gunnar explained,

Anything from dumbbells, to kettle bells, TRX straps, core sticks, pneumatic resistance, bands, water balls, medicine balls, and all forms of resistance I use in my training methods.

The celeb trainer doesn't typically isolate a certain body part when training. As he said,

We integrate a lot of different movements. So there could be a lunge with a lateral raise, there could be a squat with a press, a squat with curls, lateral lunge with curls. I combine everything. Same with the bigger movements. So take a deadlift but also attach a band to your waist so it's a deadlift and as you come up it's a glute drive so the glutes continue to fire throughout even at the top of the movement, against the resistance of the band, which is pulling you in different planes.
Girls who are afraid of lifting weights - you're not gonna get big! You're gonna get big if you're eating big!

He explained,

Try to do cardio and burn fat before you start lifting weights, is like trying to clean your house before the maid comes - you probably won't do a very good job at it and you'll piss off the maid.

Despite the fact that his workouts are always changing, Gunnar shared a few sample ab exercises to fire up that midsection. He stressed,

Remember when you're focusing on a flat stomach you're focusing way more on diet and recovery than you are about X, Y, Z, movements.

Gunnar was kind enough to share a sample ab workout with us below:

We do medicine ball slams, [reaching overhead and then slamming the ball] in front of you, as well as side-to-side plank to work all parts of the abs. We do a little ab matrix - a crunch with a reach with a medicine ball, and then [again] with a rotation in there. We do a leg raise and then an angled leg raise. It's X amount of reps per [each movement], then we cycle through it.

As for how many reps Gunnar focuses on, he said,

It depends, but ten reps on the crunch, maybe 20 on rotation, ten on the leg raise, then five and five on each side on the angled leg raise. And then we'd cycle through it 2, 3, 4, 5, times and then we'd move on to 8, 9, 10 other movements, then come back to it again, and so on and so forth.

So if you're looking to have a toned tummy by summertime, you better get moving!