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There's different schools of thought on if you should treat abs like a normal muscle group and work them hard once a week, or work them multiple times per week.
Personally, at every martial arts class I take there's always some abs in the warm up, so I do that every day almost and then do one hard day of abs (with shoulders and forearms) in the gym. The personal trainer I had, who used to be a body builder, told me do them once a week.
Basically you want to do a different ab routine each week. Mix up the exercises. For instance
Last week I did :
- 3 sets of 30 sit ups on a decline bench
- 3 sets of 20 triangle hip raises
- Super set of 20 crunches on an exercise ball and 20 straight leg raises hanging in a frame.
This week I did:
- Trilple set of 30 straight crunches, 20 elbow to knee crunches (on each side) and 20 straight leg raises laying on the ground.
- Isometric exercise called "Plank" where you keep your body completelys traight and tense, holding it off the ground by your elbows and tows.
30 seconds rest between sets, 1-2 minutes between exercises. A super set is when you do one exercise followed immediately by the next with no rest. One set of each of the exercises makes a "super" set. You can do it with three different exercises and it becomes a "triple" set.
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