Six Pack Abs

DID YOU KNOW...

70% of the population today is overweight or obese which leaves just

30% in the normal or lean weight range... within this 30% of lean people only

2-3% have a low enough body fat percentage to be able to see visible abs.

Dispite such low percentages of people who ever actually accomplish developing a set of six pack abs, our culture continues to admire and consider the abdominals as the centerpiece of the human physique and try all sorts of strange things and spend all kinds of money in their obsession to be one of the 2-3% of the population with great abs. As a trainer, most clients I see ask about how to work to develop asthetically pleasing abdominals. Most expect to hear answers involving performing exercises that specifically target the abdominals, and even though I do recommend doing abdominal strengthening exercises it is not the exercises alone that will help develop the ab area. You can do all the crunches you want but if you don't also include the following suggestions chances are you will never see the results you hope for.

The information shared here for each suggestion could actually take up enough space to fill an entire book! I love researching this stuff but because I am limited in space here and time in my busy, crazy life my ideas will be brief but hopefully helpful in kick-starting you on to better habits for health and wellness.

The reason most people fail to achieve fitness goals or any goal for that matter is they ignore the most important starting point. It involves the power of your thinking... How you think is most likely how you live out your life... Do you believe you can achieve your goal??? Mine is to be one of the 2-3% of the population who can see visible abs! (not my only goal or my most important goal in life but just for fun I want to see if I can achieve it... and I believe I can... so far I'm still working on it and have seen some progress!). When you fail to believe you usually fall into procrastination, laziness, and poor mental attitude. A few steps to take to overcome your unbelief...

1. Decide exactly what you want... (tighter abs, more energy, more confidence etc...)
2. Document goals and what you will do to achieve them.
3. Visualize your achievement.
4. Take massive action to begin.
Don't underestimate the importance of this step and taking time to motivate yourself to go for it and to frequently re-visit this step as needed.

Another reason most fail to achieve their fitness goals is because they fail to understand the overwhelming importance of their diet! If your goal is to lose stubborn body fat, exercise alone will not be enough. The truth is just about everybody already has a set of six pack abs... the problem is there are layers of fat hiding them... If we could burn off that fat then we could reveal our own aesthetically pleasing set of abs too! I feel sad when I see people training like crazy but because they do not change poor dietary habits they never reduce body fat (this was me for many years). Why bother with all the work if you do not decide to combine exercise with good nutrition? Not only do you need the right foods to burn fat but when you are a very active person your body needs power packed nutrition as part of your overall workout regime... it needs the nutrients found in a good diet, so like a potent elixir it can be delivered to your muscles and bones so they have the ability to repair, rebuild and become stronger as a result of the hard work you do and therefore reveal a more beautful body composition.

Changing dietary habits is hard work I know! But I think the key (it's really helped me) is educating yourself and again having the right mindset about what we are actually doing to our bodies when we mindlessly eat a doughnut or down a pack of greasy french fries. Find out what different types of food are actually doing inside your body. Actively think about the negative cellular processes and you will stand a better chance of being turned off by junk food. I have found the better I eat over time the less I crave junky high processed food and instead go for an apple or raw vegetables for snack options... the great thing about health food is you can have as much as you want with no guilt or regret!!!... and you can feel good about pressing on with your goal! (If you want more suggestions for a specific diet to try... check out my last post).

After you set yourself up with a right mindset and find a sustainable healthy way to eat, be sure you evaluate your training routine. People fail to reach fitness goals due to ineffective training routines. For example if you are aiming for a tighter ab area (like most people) and all you include are crunches in your workout routine it will most likely be ineffective. Instead most of your focus when working out should be centered on a full-body workout strategy. Full body workouts involving multi-joint exercises elicit a strong fat-burning and muscle building hormonal response as well as a metabolic rate increase... whereas just training your abdominals or doing less intense single-joint exercises will not deliver the same response.

What do I mean by multi-joint exercises? They are exercises that move through a larger range of motion using mainly large muscle groups. For example a "clean and press" is a multi-joint exercise that moves a weight from the floor to an overhead position as opposed to a single-joint exericse like a "leg extension" which moves through a smaller range of motion from the floor to only the knee level. Obviously the clean and press forces you to perform a greater quantity of work than a leg extension resulting in more calories burned, more muscle groups worked, which more effectively creates the metabolic environment that stimulates change.

Unfortunaltely the way most people train involves single-joint exercises for selected muscle groups in addition to 30-40 mins of moderate-steady cardio work. Better than nothing, but a better way to workout will deliver a residual metabolic elevation for hours even days after the workout is over. You want to put the WORK back into your workout! You want to work hard enough using large range-of-motion exercises so that your body will have to do a lot of work to recover and therefore burn calories even while you sleep. You want to go away knowing you worked every muscle in your body as opposed to just a couple small muscle groups. If you work out 3-4 days a week at this intensity you essentially increase your resting metabolic rate 24/7. The result of all of this is you get leaner quicker!

So go for multi-joint exercises than require a greater range of motion and use larger muscle groups. Some examples are... squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, push-ups, shoulder press... or even better, try combining some of these exercises together, like a pull-up then going right down into a push-up and then powering back up into a pull-up. That's a huge range of motion! Try a set of ten of these and see how hard your whole body has to work! Whew!... I'm tired just thinking about it!

I have so much more to say but I will have to save "all things cardio" (which is another important key to saying goodbye to a mushy middle) for my next post... for now remember... a right mindset, a sustainable and nutritious diet plan that helps burn fat (see last post), and an effective multi-joint exercise workout strategy will begin to help you see your body composition line up the way you want it to... including becoming part of the 2-3% of the population with visible abs!

If you'd like some help designing your own multi-joint exercise plan... visit me on Facebook! I would love to give you some ideas!