Six Pack Abs - The REAL way to get them

Six pack abs really is what everyone wants. Yes people want to improve other parts of their body but generally that varies quite considerably from stronger, bigger, less fat, more endurance, more power, more symmetry, better posture, improved function etc. When it comes to abs most people just want them to be visible!

So what is the most effective and quickest way to achieve this? Firstly you have to lower your body fat so that the abdominal are visible.

The areas we are going to look at here are diet and exercise.

Diet:

If you have spent much time on my site before you will know that the diet i suggest is the

elimination diet. But to really turbo charge the burning there are two other diet techniques that work really well together.

These are:

- Wave diet. The wave diet involves not eating carbohydrates for 3 days and then having a carbohydrate day at the end of those 3 days. This is advantageous because most people are over eating carbs and cutting back like this will mean they eat more fat and protein which should help them to burn more body fat.
-Eat Stop Eat. Eat stop eat is basically fasting (not eating for a period of time). This has many benefits which include increased life expectancy, accelerated healing and rejuvenation process, autolysis (lose fat), detoxification, stronger immune system, prevent degenerative diseases, increased awareness, more efficient protein synthesis, break food addictions, save money, increase productivity, increase energy levels.

One thing that fasting doesn't do that most people would assume it does is waste away muscle tissue. As long as you partake in a strength training program at least 3 times a week and drink lots of water.

Fasting will decrease insulin levels and increase insulin sensitivity. Insulin being released puts the body in storage mode. This includes storing body fat. Within 24 hours of fasting your insulin levels drop by up to 70%. If your insulin levels are constantly high you can become insulin resistant which leads to Type 2 diabetes.

Your growth hormone levels increase by 6-15 times. This has many benefits but the ones that you will mainly be interested in are increased muscle mass and less fat.

So putting this all together you will go 3 days carb free, 1 days carbs, 1 day fasting and then back round to 3 days carb free.

An example of how this might work looks like this:

- Monday. No Carbs

- Tuesday. No Carbs

- Wednesday. No Carbs

- Thursday. Normal day with carbs included

- Friday. Fasting (just water)

- Saturday. No Carbs

- Sunday. No Carbs

This whole process is carried out whilst being on the Elimination diet.

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So now you have the diet sorted you need to start thinking about the exercise side of things.

A good fat loss exercise program should last about 45 - 60 minutes and be intense. You should avoid cardio equipment for the reasons given here. You should perform training methods like circuits (a group of exercises performed back to back with no rest), peripheral heart training (upper body and lower body performed back to back so whilst upper body rest the lower body works), tabita training (20 seconds working with 10 seconds rest) and supersets (any two exercises performed back to back). The type of exercises that you should do are squat + press, walking lunges, clean + press, bent over row, jump squats, press ups, pull ups etc. These are all exercises that use a lot of muscle which means their benefits are far greater than isolation exercises like bicep curls and lateral raise.

So a demo session that would include all the training methods mentioned above could look like this.

Deadlift

Bench Press

(Perform one exercise after the other in superset format).

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Jump squats

Russian Twist

Walking Lunge

Press Ups

Clean + Press

(Perform 10 reps of each exercise and complete the circuit twice).

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Alternate Lunge

Bent over row

(20 seconds on one exercise the 10 seconds rest and then 20 seconds on the other exercise. Continue until you have done each exercise 4 times).

This type of training will build muscle and strength, raise your metabolism short term and in the long run and not mess with your hormone levels as much as continuous cardo will.

Exercise is obviously important but doing the wrong exercise for you can cause more harm than good. Take a look at my posture page to see what exercises you should be doing to improve your posture and not make it worse.