Magic Abs! A Time Saving 6-Pack Routine
By Ariyan Samarbakhsh
So summer is coming up and 1000 ab curls a week later your core is stronger but you don’t have that illusive six-pack you want. Why not? Why doesn’t everyone get a six pack- and how you can save yourself hours in trying to get tight abs?
This answer is simply by watching what you put in your body, doing the appropriate training and getting enough rest.
I see people come into the gym day in day out in an attempt to get ripped abs. Most of these people will spend 40-60 minutes on a cardio machine then cap their session off with 15-20 minutes of various ab exercises. While this workout will do wonders for the aerobic capacity of the heart and lungs and will improve the strength of the core, it has very limited potential in bringing out your abs.
Your abs respond to training like all of your other muscles. They need to be put under stress using progressive overload and they need sufficient nutrients and rest (at least eight hours a night) to recover as bigger, stronger muscles.
Imagine someone with a lean muscular body. They will never have any fat surrounding any muscle. A healthy body is low in body fat %, which will directly enhance the aesthetics of the muscles. The less fat around a muscle the more the muscle will stand out. It should go without saying that someone with a six pack doesn’t have a flabby gut.
In order to bring out any muscle, you must reduce your body fat % by doing weight training, aerobic and anaerobic cardio and eating nutritionally valuable food. Your abs are no different. By doing compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, chest press and pull-ups you increase your testosterone levels which helps increase muscle and burn fat. This applies to both men and women!
Remember – you are what you eat! If you eat 10 mars bars a day, sure enough you’re going to turn into one. Is the one minute of pleasure spent eating a mars bar, or any nutritionally worthless food, worth the 45-60 minutes you have to spend to burn it off? Why burn off fat when you can avoid having it in the first place? A healthy diet is key in bringing out your abs. Eating every 2-3 hours to stabilize insulin levels and eating a balanced diet of carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats WILL bring out your abs when combined with the necessary workouts as there is less fat around your abs and so when you work them they will repair bigger and more visible.
To sum it up, don’t spend one hour a day wasting your time doing ab work for your summer beach body. Spend that hour preparing your food for the next day so you don’t resort to easily available processed food, which is high in fats and carbohydrates. Before you know it your fresh new healthy diet will become habitual. Combine that with a structured workout with heavy emphasis on weights and muscle work, the appropriate rest for recovery and the drive and motivation to keep it going after the first month and within three months you’ll find your abs have appeared. As if by magic.
