I am about to start another 8 week program and I was wondering if there would be any disadvantage to splitting up my abs exercises? What I mean would be, for example, to do 3 of my abs exercises at the beginning of the workout followed by shoulder, back or whatever I happen to be working on and then finishing off with the remainder of the abs exercises at the end of the workout?
abs are stabilizer muscles. They are a bit trained during most exercises anyway. I would probably not do any of them first, especially if you are training them with resistance, and even if not. Lots of reps can resemble a cardio workout for instance. This will deplete some glycogen that can be used later in your workout, and some of your harder lifts may suffer from this. It will not hurt other than that.
-------------- Great people never want it easier, they just want to be better!
Ron