I recently started an ab workout that makes my abs extremely sore. Unfortunately, when my abs gets this sore I cannot sleep.

At first, I thought I would be able to sleep after the first time or two, but I haven't been able to sleep yet on the night after an ab workout!

I don't know what to do. There isn't really a sleeping position I can get in that will relax my stomach. I've always been a bad sleeper -- it's just something I have to live with.

Has anyone else had to deal with this? What did you do to enable yourself to sleep with very sore abs? I'm afraid that I may have no alternative besides cut back on ab work.

(The ab workout is nothing special: weighted crunches and swiss ball work with good form.)

I find with time, a body part will grow used to the work and DOMS will decrease. For instance, when I started doing squats for the first time in years, I couldn't walk without looking funny for a week, and steps were a whole degree of torture I didn't know existed. Now, however, while I'll get some soreness, it is more of a good, light burning soreness instead of an imobilizing pain :)

How long have you been doing this workout and how often? Maybe cut back on the frequency to once a week, and reduce the volume and intensity some. Hopefully, this will allow you to sleep better, then you can progressively start to add back volume and/or frequency with time.

How about taking an ibuprofen? Helps me sleep by taking the edge of the pain.

Have you tried a cold or warm compresses? Cold is usually used to reduce swelling, but some people find that cold works better than warm in the case of muscle soreness or DOMS.

How about taking an ibuprofen? Helps me sleep by taking the edge of the pain.

Maybe Dan feels differently, but I wouldn't want to have to rely on pain killers every night to sleep.

Make sure you stay well hydrated during exercise. Weigh yourself before and after. If you lose weight during a workout, you need to drink enough water to (almost) replace it.

Try doing a short bit of cool down cardio if you don't. It doesn't have to be more than a few minutes, and it doesn't have to be intense. But if you wash the muscles when you are done with them sometimes that will make you feel better.

Maybe Dan feels differently, but I wouldn't want to have to rely on pain killers every night to sleep.

No, I wouldn't either. But you're not working abs every night. And hopefully his body will adjust and he'll find a ab program that works for him. Just a suggestion.

I went through the same thing. See doordude's thread on abs.

If I work my abs moderately more than twice a week or so, I experience incredible nausea. So I limit it to that often. If I find they need more work than that, I devote a couple of weeks of extra intensity to them with the expectation that I will need to put up with the pain for that long.

Funny, it doesn't happen like that with other body parts.

i hate that.. and moving around, picking things up the next day after doing abs..
so now i dont train abs at all haha

How about taking an ibuprofen? Helps me sleep by taking the edge of the pain.

This one is a good issue. If your training is messing with your sleep, that's a big downside of the training. I would think that backing off the intensity or volume a little until you can handle the training without sleep problems is a good move - not getting good sleep is detracting from the value of having done the intense training - that is, the training doesn't work so well if you don't put the sleep in.

Now what about the ibuprofen? If it restores sleep, that's a good thing. But I don't know whether there are subclinical aspects of the ibuprofen that might interfere with the training. Muscle growth is stimulated by damage, so there is some relationship between inflammation and the stimulus. Well, ibuprofen (and other NSAIDs) are great at reducing the inflammation. This raises the question of whether the NSAID might interfere with the stimulus for muscle growth that was the whole point of this.

Now I don't know whether NSAIDs do interfere with the muscle growth stimulus.

I do know that I've used ibuprofen on and off during my workouts. These days very infrequently and typically for headache only. I did use ibuprofen more in the beginning few months until I realized I didn't need it, and I started to wonder if it might get in the way.

I am not the first person to wonder about this - http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/painkillers.htm says:

"However, what most people don't realize is that high doses of these pain killers can "blunt" the normal rise in protein synthesis that occurs after exercise. In other words, while they can control the pain, regular use of these pain killers could put the brakes on muscle growth."

So I'm doing great with cardio and hydration keeping all soreness away, so I'll keep doing it that way.

If I was in enough pain to lose sleep, I wouldn't just put up with it. Occasionally, ibuprofen could be the deal. But on a regular basis, I think I would change the training to something I could do without that much pain.

Sleep on your back with a pilow under your knees. I believe It relaxes the abs by tilting the pelvis.
Works sweet for me.
Wilders

You did say that you have trouble sleeping anyhow...maybe you ought to address this issue first.

I get the impression that if it wasn't abs it could be any of a myriad of other annoyances that keep you from sleeping.

As far as abs goes you could also try varying the routine less. That way your abs will get more used to the routine and you'll get less DOMS. (If it is DOMS).

You could stiil change up but not as frequently.

I don't know what your ab routine is but sometimes less is more insofar as how you do the ex's AND IN WHAT ORDER.

In other words you could do 150 lying crunches and still not get as good a workout as you would if you supersetted 3 ex's at lower reps hitting the whole package including obliques.

You could also do fewer reps but more weight (Hanging knee raises for example)

And.......you just may be plain overdoing the ab thing anyway.

Do you have that "I want a sixpack" by April the first going on right now? So you're working your abs morning noon and night seven days a week?

If so give those poor old abs a break...they can only take so much.