One of the most desired and pleasing aspects of a great-looking body is a set of six-pack abs. It is the central piece of a well-built physique. There is so much information on the Internet and TV advertisements promising six-pack abs: unfortunately, a lot of these ads can be very misleading. Just 5 minutes a day is all you need on our machine to get tight, firm abs fast. How many times have you heard that? Let’s unravel the mystery behind six-pack abs.
A visible set of six-pack abs is the result of well-developed abdominal muscles and lowered body fat levels. No ifs or buts about it. Without a low body fat percentage your abdominals would not be visible: they will be covered with a layer of fat. And without developed abdominal muscles you won’t have a visible set of six-pack abs even if your body fat is low.
To reduce your body fat you must create a calorie (energy) deficit. What that means is the energy (calories) you take in must be less than the energy (calories) your body uses each day.
In order to create this calorie deficit you must do one of two things or both. You must either expend or burn more energy than you consume or you must consume less energy than you expend. This is achieved by exercising or eating less.
To create this deficit use the calorie calculator to get a rough idea of how many calories you should be consuming to help reduce body fat and increase muscle tone (while exercising, of course). In the next chapter I will show you how to make adjustments to your calorie intake to increase the deficit and speed up your results.
When it comes to choosing the right exercises for abdominals a lot of people make the same mistakes. The old conceptions that doing 100 regular crunches every day as an effective way of building abdominal muscles is long gone. Developing six-pack abs doesn’t have to involve a marathon crunch session. It is actually much simpler and more efficient than that.
The abdominal muscles are just the same as every other muscle in your body, in that they are stimulated through resistance training. So, just like any other muscle in the body, I only train my abdominals once a week. I know this is a hard concept for people to get their around. A lot of people religiously train abs every day with little or no success. This is because the abdominal muscles also need time to recover and develop just like any other muscle in the body. Working out your abdominals every day will lead to over-training. Therefore, you should not train them any differently from any other muscle group.
Just like any other muscles, you should exercise your abdominal muscles with heavy resistant weight training. This is the quickest way to build your abdominal muscles: more weight means more reason for your abdominal muscles to develop and adapt to the weight.
It literally takes 10–15 minutes of direct weight training your abdominals a week. Your abdominals, as previously mentioned, also get a lot of indirect stimulus from training other body parts. So yes, once a week is plenty.
The smartest and fastest way to go about achieving visible lean abs is by having a combination of:
· Resistant weight training
· Healthy nutritional diet
· Regular cardiovascular exercise
Concentrate on eating small, well-balanced meals throughout the day and throw in a few cardio sessions throughout the week and you will see results fast. Remember, the eating of small meals throughout the day has a thermal effect on your body and will help you get lean. With cardio added to your routine, you can significantly increase your resting metabolic rate and your daily calorie deficit. This will help turn your body’s metabolism into a furnace to get the leaner appearance. The leaner you are, the more visible your abs will be.
In conclusion, there is no real big secret to getting six-pack abs. For some reason, the process seems to have been over-complicated through various sources. Do weights, eat well, and do cardio – and there you have it. It really is just doing the basic things right, consistently!
Facts About Six Pack Abs
