Getting perfect abs – the 4 key ingredients
When they think about getting that set of washboard abs, most people have a mental image of the task being mainly working with crunches and sit-ups (and perhaps a few leg lifts thrown in for good nmeasure).
Unfortunately, it’s realistically going to require 4 separate but related activities to get the type of abs you see highlighted on TV and in the movies; there aren’t any short cuts, unfortunately. These 4 activities are necessary and they’re aimed at the crucial combination – lose fat, build muscle.
Your Diet
The single biggest issue here is, you can spend 24 hours a day working on crunches but if you still have too much body fat, you’ll never have six-pack abs.
So your diet has to be one that supports fat loss. First thing being, think about calories — you need to take in less calories than you burn. Second, you need a good balance of protein, carb, and healthy fat. You need the protein to build muscle and also to help muscle recover from exercise; and, protein can help you to control your appetite. You need carbs for energy. And healthy fat because some forma of fat – and most fat in people’s diets is NOT the right type of fat – are an essential part of a balanced diet.
Cardio Exercise
Why cardio exercises, specifically? Because 3500 calories = 1 lb of fat, so if you want to eliminate the layer of fat that hides the abs, cardio helps to burn the calories, and therefore burn the fat.
Strength exercises
People are often surprised to learn that strength training has the biggest impact on the metabolism … meaning, if you perform this type of training regularly, you’ll literally put your body in a position where the metabolism speeds up and … you’ve guessed it, your burn fat more quickly. Big muscle exercises – squats, bench presses, lunges, etc – performed regularly will have a bigger impact on metabolism even than cardio and certainly more than small muscle exercises (bicep curls, for example) although it all helps. The faster you burn the fat … the faster you get those great abs you’re working so hard for.
Abs-specific exercises
And only now do we come to the exercises that most people have in mind from the outset – crunches, sit-ups, and leg-lifts in all their variety.
So, this is the path for great abs; but the biggest obstacle isn’t actually associated with any of these. The biggest challenge is purely mental, and it’s this – are you willing to pay the price?
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