The Requirements To Get Six Pack Abs
Typically coming in on top of the list for what people are looking for with their workouts is getting a set of six pack abs. Regardless of whether you care to admit it or not, six pack abs scream ‘fit’. Anyone who is walking around sporting a set gives off the impression they know what they are doing in the gym and likely are making gym-time a regular commitment.
Obtaining a six pack is not an easy goal since for most of us, the stomach area is one of the last places we lose body fat, especially when getting down to extremely low body fat levels. Also, many people take a very wrong approach to trying to obtain six pack abs, which again hinders the results they see.
Here are the main requirements that must be put in place if you want a six pack.
A Solid Diet Plan
Ever heard the saying, ‘Abs are made in the kitchen’? If not, then you need to pay attention to it. When it comes to getting your abdominal muscles showing, nothing is going to promote a lean mid-section faster than getting your diet in line.
You can try as hard as you like to exercise your way to a six pack, but you’re going to run out of gas before you reach the end of the road. What you’re putting in your mouth – or not putting in your mouth, on a daily basis will be the single biggest influence on your abs.
This not only applies to direct fat loss, but also factors in with water retention as well. If you’re decently lean already, you’ve likely seen this at work. You’re looking great and then – WHAM, you eat a high salt meal and your abs have immediately gone into hiding, or so it seems.
Then a few days later, they reappear again like magic. Only it’s not magic, it’s water weight gain. So, not only do calories, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats count towards staying lean, but sodium does as well.
If you aren’t going to be responsible as far as diet is concerned, you may want to pick another goal to work towards because six pack abs are out of reach for you (apart from the 1% of you who are just genetically lucky and have abs regardless).
Heavy Weight Lifting
Notice I did not say light, circuit-style weight lifting. Why? Because heavy weight lifting is what will signal the body to retain lean body mass and it is this lean body mass that is going to keep your metabolic rate revved over the long term. This virtually turns you into a calorie-burning machine – which as you likely can guess is key to speeding up fat loss.
While circuit style weight training may burn a decent amount of calories, over time it’s not going to provide the same results as focusing on heavier lifts will – utilizing the rep range of 6-10 reps total.
Plus, if you don’t maintain the weight on the bar throughout your lifting sessions, you’re likely to grow weaker, which is something most of us aren’t going to welcome.
Some Cardio Training
Now, cardio training is probably the most overdone factor when it comes to getting a six pack. Everyone thinks that if they want to get abs, they should hop on that treadmill and not get off until they can barely walk any longer.
Not so.
Cardio is effective for helping to increase the amount of calories you burn that day, and in some cases over the next few days depending on the variation of cardio you’re doing, but there are limits.
Too much cardio tends to make people hold water weight, which just makes the abs disappear faster. Instead, plan your cardio smart. Do enough that you create a bit of a calorie deficit, but not so much that you have no life outside of the gym or that you start struggling to recover from your lifting sessions. Those are going to be paramount to success, so you don’t want to jeopardize this.
What About Ab Work?
Most people are probably wondering where abdominal exercises fit into the picture. After all, if you want to increase your biceps, you do bicep curls, if you want to increase your quads, you do squats, if you want to increase your chest, you bench, and so on. It would seem to make sense that if you want six pack abs, you’d better crunch, crunch, crunch, and then crunch some more for good measure.
This, however, is again not completely the case.
The thing to keep in mind here is that in order to see abs, you need to reduce your abdominal fat, not necessarily build your abs bigger. Building your abs bigger would just make your waist wider, which is something many don’t want.
We all have abdominal muscles, just for most of us, they are in hiding. Once you remove that additional layer on top of the abs, voila, you have a six pack.
Since abdominal exercises themselves burn relatively few calories and don’t do a great deal in the way of building significant muscle mass (which then increases your metabolic rate), you’re better off focusing more of your efforts on a good weight training program coupled with a very good diet.
How are you going about your approach to get six pack abs? Are changes needed?
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