Usually, this is where you will hear the usual advice of crunches, bends, twists and all manner of exercises. True, I will mention them in this article… but… the number one, and most important rule of all which nobody seems to mention first is: lose fat.
If you don’t first bring your body fat down as low as possible, you will never, ever see your six pack underneath even a small amount of abdominal fat. You need very low body fat to see a six pack, or you are just wasting your time.
You may not even consider yourself fat. But, let’s do a little test. Flex your abdominals as hard as you can. Now, can you pinch any fat on your stomach? And, when you press, can you feel yourself pressing through a ‘cushion’ before hitting the hard bumpy little muscles underneath?
Yes?
Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you simply have too much body fat for abs… and you need to lose it.
You should also know that you can’t burn fat and build muscle at the same time, so, it’s absolutely pointless trying to do any abs exercises whilst you are losing fat. You see, losing fat means eating less calories than you normally do, and building muscle requires more calories than you usually eat… and you can’t have both at the same time.
In fact, most people don’t even need to do many abs exercises to get a six pack. By just reducing their body fat enough they see that they had abs all along – maybe even good ones – and just never could see them.
Once you’ve lowered your body fat enough and can finally feel (and see, to some degree) the hard muscles without any cushioning covering them, you are ready to begin building them to make them more pronounced.
To get a six pack you can be proud of, I recommend using weighted crunch exercises. Weighted crunches are crunches performed with added – ever increasing – weight.
Like so…
Place your feet and legs on an elevated platform, bench, couch, or your bed, and lay down on the floor. Place and hold a weight plate across your upper chest. Now, keeping the small of your back flat on the floor, lift your shoulders and upper body up as far as you can and ‘crunch’ your abs. Hold for a second, and then slowly lower.
Repeat for 10-12 repetitions and for 3 – 5 sets, with 1 – 3 minute’s rest in between.
Six pack muscles are the same as any other, and they require the same treatment. Work them only once every 72 hours, and gradually increase the amount of weight you crunch with. (And, if you’re still sore from 72 hours before, then miss that session out or you are overdoing it and no benefit will come from it, only a backwards step.)
Of course, you need to also eat like you would if you were growing any other muscle, so you need to get enough calories and enough protein – but be careful to cut it very fine; if you eat too much, your abs will be buried under fat again!