How To Get Six Packs [Part 2]

Hi guys, we are back! We hope that you have learnt something from our previous post. For now, we will move on to the second part of getting six packs!

Building muscles

1) Do crunches. Lie on the floor (with or without a mat) with your arms in front of your chest or with your hands lightly touching your temples (never behind your head). Bend your knees. Raise your shoulders (upper torso) towards your knees, using strictly your abdominal muscles. It is very important to not lift your entire back off the floor, as this can cause back strain, and the extended movement does not help you develop six pack abs any faster. The most important part of the crunch is the initial flexing of your abs as you lift your shoulders off the floor. As soon as you begin lifting off the floor exhale through your mouth, ending with a gasp once your shoulders are off the floor. Then pause for a second once you are at the top of the crunch and exhale the last bit of air from your diaphragm while flexing your abs. Now lower back down slowly and controlled while inhaling through your nose, just until your shoulder blades touch the ground. Do not let your head touch the ground.

2)

Do sit ups. Lie on the floor, feet on the floor, knees up and hands crossed on your chest. Have someone hold your feet down, or wedge them underneath something heavy. Sit all the way up, lifting your lower back off the floor along with your shoulder blades. Keep your back straight (no hunching). Lower yourself down. Repeat. Once this becomes relatively easy for you (i.e. you can do a quite a bit with ease) start adding more challenges. Find an incline bench. Do weighted sit ups. Hold a weight on your chest while you do these. As these become easier, hold heavier and heavier weights.

3)

Train your entire core. To build really great abs it's important to first understand what abs do. Their full name is 'rectus abdominis'. The 'rectus' bit, is Latin for 'straight, proper, upright'. Contrary to popular opinion, the abs' primary job is not to curl you up into a ball, but they work together with the back muscles to maintain correct posture and stabilize the spine. These muscles are not just for show! So the best exercises for abs are ones that force your entire core to go into overdrive to support your spine. Some exercises that do this are squats and dead-lifts. These exercises will train your entire core to work together to do what it is designed to do. At the same time they will also train a lot of other muscles (e.g. glutes and quads).

4)

Do leg lifts. Lie on the floor, legs straight out, hands at your sides. Lift your legs straight up (not bending your knees at all) until they're at a 90 degree angle (or close). Lower your legs and repeat without letting your legs touch the floor. For more challenge there is equipment at most gyms that will allow you to raise yourself up using your arms as support and dangle your legs. If you're using this piece of equipment, you can make it easier by just raising your knees to your chest. It's more difficult to raise your legs to a horizontal position with your legs straight. This helps firm up the lower abdomen. If you're truly a monster, try doing leg lifts with a medicine ball hanging from your feet. Or, hang from a pull up bar and raise your legs in front of you all the way up to the bar.

5)

Do jackknife sit ups. Lie down flat on the floor. Place your hands on the ground to your sides for balance; you can pick them up as you get used to the movement. Simultaneously raise your knees and torso so that your knees and face meet on an imaginary line extending from your pelvis to the ceiling. You should be able to kiss your knees at the top of the motion. Your legs will naturally fold bringing your feet towards your hips, much like a jackknife. Lie back down (i.e. "spread out") and repeat. Place a weight between your feet when you think you can handle it.

6)

Do static holds. Put your body into the push-up position but with your elbows on the floor, and your whole body flat. This position is known as the static hold position, or the plank, and it trains your core (including your abs) to hold the body in place which is the real purpose of your abs. Hold this position for as long as possible. Beginners should be aiming to start off with at least 45 seconds, while seasoned ab workers are known to achieve over 5 minutes static holds. To perform the side static hold, roll onto one side of your body and lift into the same position as before, but this time only one arm will be on the ground with the other arm pointed straight up the air and your non weight bearing leg resting on your bottom leg. Once again, hold this for as long as possible.

7)

Train your oblique muscles. It's not as important to work on your oblique muscles at first, but eventually you'll want to start working these too. These are the muscles to either side of your stomach. There are multiple ways to do this and anything that includes twisting your torso against a resistance counts. There are twisting machines at gyms, you can twist while you do sit-ups, you can do side bends, you can twist side to side with a medicine ball in hand, etc. Be aware though, that many beginners tend to have weak oblique compared to their abs (it simply isn't used as much in daily life) so go easy on the sides at first.

- Do bicycle crunches. Lift your feet off the ground while doing the crunches by alternating each leg in the air. Bring your left knee up toward your right shoulder and then your right knee toward your left shoulder.

8)

Find new ways to crunch, bend and twist in your daily life. Some possibilities include:


- Use a stability ball.

Use a stability ball. Do your crunches on the ball to introduce instability to your workout, which will improve your balance too. There are also lots of core exercises that can be done with a stability ball. You can also use a small bubble used for physical therapy.

- Duck and twist during your daily routine. Reach with your left hand to things on your right and vice versa. If you feel like turning around to face something, see if you can do it with keeping your hips in place and twisting at the waist. (This is awkward when talking to other people, use only against inanimate objects.) While walking or standing, pretend that something is coming toward you and you have to duck to get out of the way. Do this as often as you are comfortable or at times when it won't look weird. You can bend forward from the hips or, if you're really into it, bend at the knees too and really "sink" out of the way.

- Add complex core-movements to your workout. That will boost your overall body constitution tremendously. For example, combine push-ups with rows. Go into a push-up position on two dumbbells. Now don't do a push-up, but instead start to row alternating dumbbells. See how much power you need only to hold balance? Combine exercises! Be creative. Tension is your friend.

How To Get Six Packs [Part 1]

Lose Fats

1)

Do cardio workouts. Important step to get six pack abs: There is no way to target fat loss in any area of your body. You need to lose some of that extra fat over your abs. Even if you workout and get gigantic ab muscles, if there is still a layer of fat over them no one will ever get to see them. Cardio workouts are workouts that raise your heart rate for a given set of time. Some examples would be running, jogging, bike riding, dancing and rowing.

2)

Eat smaller dinners. Large dinners tend to hurt a fat loss process because most people aren't very active after dinner. This is the basis for advice along the lines of "don't eat anything within a certain number of hours before going to bed". The claim that your entire dinner is stored as fat isn't entirely true. The process is more complicated than that, but the fact you don't move after dinner is enough to hurt your cause. You can offset this by eating a larger lunch or snacking healthily before dinner. Fresh fruits or vegetables are excellent choices for curbing appetite not to mention other health benefits. A handful of nuts might do the same. Drink a large glass of water before sitting at the table.

3)

Eat breakfast. Many people skip breakfast because they don't have time for it. The harm of skipping breakfast from a weight loss perspective is it makes you eat a huge lunch since your body hasn't had anything in the past 12 (or more) hours. When you eat a huge lunch you get that after meal drowsiness so now you're both unproductive and inactive. Cereals don't take much time to prepare and consume, and most of them are very healthy nowadays. If you are extremely pressed for time, consider grabbing a box of breakfast bars or a smoothie and throwing one in your bag when you leave for work or school. Some breakfast bars out there are also excellent sources of fiber. Even an apple or a yogurt is better than nothing. Ideally, your breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day, lunch the second, and dinner the smallest.

4)

Lift weights. The more muscle your body has, the more calories your body burns, even at rest. Plus, resistance training is important to limit the amount of muscle mass lost whilst reducing your calorie intake. If you only do cardiovascular exercises (running, playing basketball, football) without weight training then you may lose the muscle mass, including the muscle in your abs.

5)

Keep metabolism steady. Eating one small meal every three hours that you are awake will not speed up your metabolism, rather, it will keep it going. Your metabolism goes and slows with your food intake and eating something small every three hours will keep that metabolism burning calories and will help you lose weight. Every meal should include lean protein, so that your body won't need to break down your muscles for fuel, which would shrink your abs as well as slow down your metabolism.

6)

Drink more water every day. To find out how much water you need to drink as a minimum per day, halve your weight (in pounds) and that is how many ounces of water you need to drink. So a 150lb person would need to drink a minimum of 2.2 liters a day. It sounds like an absurd amount of water, but you get water from the food you eat, and you can drink teas and pure fruit juices to make up some of the quota.

* Drinking too much water (several liters, especially while sweating) can dangerously dilute certain salts and minerals. If you are exercising heavily and sweating a lot, you will need to replace your salts as well as fluids. Supplement your water drinking with sports drinks or potassium rich fruits such as bananas and apples. *

7)

Switch out refined grains for whole grains. In a scientific study, people who ate all whole grains (in addition to five servings of fruits and vegetables, three servings of low-fat dairy, and two servings of lean meat, fish, or poultry) lost more belly fat than another group that ate the same diet, but with all refined grains. A diet rich in whole grains changes the glucose and insulin response in your body, which hastens the melting of fat, and visceral fat, that deep layer of fat, is easier for your body to burn than the subcutaneous fat under your skin (the fat that you can see and grab).

Stay tuned for the second part, people!

Sources found from wikiHow and WebMD.

Tips on Running

It's best to start out very easy, at a slow jog and focus not on intensity but on how long you're on the road. Start out with a small amount of time - 10 minutes or 20 minutes, depending on where you are - and run or walk/run comfortably the entire time. Do this for the entire first week and even two weeks if you can stand it.

Gradually increase your time until you can run 30 minutes. From there, you can stay at 30 minutes or increase the amount of time you run gradually, every two weeks. But do not overdo it in the beginning!

WALK, RUN AND PLAN

If you are a true beginner and cannot run for 10 minutes, you should start out with a walk or run plan. Here's a good one to start with (do each one 3 times a week).

WEEK 1: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 1 minute, and then walk for 1 minute. Repeat these 1/1 intervals for 10 minutes or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.

WEEK 2: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 2 minutes and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 2/2 intervals for 10 minutes or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.

WEEK 3: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 3 minutes and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 3/2 intervals for 15 minutes or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.

WEEK 4: Walk for 10 minutes. Jog slowly for 5 minutes and then walk for 2 minutes. Repeat these 2/2 intervals for 20 minutes or until you become uncomfortable. Walk for 5 minutes to cool down.

You get the picture. The idea is to gradually increase your running time until you can do 10 minutes straight. Then increase the 10 minutes to 12, and so on, each week until you can eventually run for 30 minutes. Now you're a runner!

What NOT to do for Weight Training

#1: LIFTING WITH EGO INSTEAD OF MUSCLE

Every gym has a few guys who grunt and scowl as they try to perform a bicep curl with their 70 lb dumbbell. They use their shoulders, back, legs, abs, and training partner to help that dumbbell travel from A to B. Now, there is nothing wrong with overloading a muscle now and then, doing negative reps, and things like that. What doesn’t work is when the muscle you are trying to work isn’t getting much work. Perfect form with less weight beats lousy form and more weight every time.

#2: WORKING MUSCLES IN THE WRONG ORDER

It blows my mind how many people will start with bicep curls or abs, then go run through some bench press, followed by squats, and biceps again, then go after some back muscles. Working muscles inside-out (chest, back, shoulders, biceps/triceps, core for upper body) is crucial to injury prevention and muscle development. Your core is important during bench press (keeping it tight allows you to push off from a solid foundation and helps protect the lower back), so don’t go after abs first! Workout your muscles in order…don’t be a dummy!

#3: FORGETTING THAT YOUR BODY NEEDS OXYGEN

By observing the way most people breathe while lifting, I’m surprised global warming is getting any traction at all. Forget the need for carbon offsets, no one breathes in the gym! The rule of thumb for breathing during a lift is to exhale when you are doing the most work (pressing the bar up during a bench press, lifting the dumbell up during a curl) and inhale during the half of the rep when the body is doing the least amount of work (usually when it is working with gravity).

Inhaling and exhaling at the wrong times during an exercise messes up our body’s call for oxygen, increases blood pressure, and diminishes the body’s ability to perform. Breathing at the right times is crucial! And when you breathe, make sure to inhale and exhale like you mean it…fog up the mirror!

#4: DRINKING CARBONATED BEVERAGES AT THE GYM

I saw a guy drinking Sunkist orange soda at the gym. I kid you not. In between sets he was sipping on his Sunkist. I wanted to get the Heineken cartoon guys together to say, “Brilliant!” The sugar, the carbonation (direct attack on lung capacity over the short-term!). Yikes. Some of you are thinking, “I can’t believe a guy drank Sunkist” as you sip on your carbonated energy drink. Seriously folks, carbonation is bad news…carbonated water, soda, carbonated energy drinks, beer. If you cut carbonation out of your life for a month, you would be amazed at how much easier you could breathe. Try it!

#5: NOT STRETCHING

Nothing blows my mind more than someone who doesn’t stretch before their workout (after their warm-up) and after their workout. Breathing deeply and stretching are two essential pieces of the pre-workout and post-workout puzzle. I am amazed at how many people will tear apart their legs with a brave and brutal leg workout and then won’t stretch their hamstrings, quads, calves, and groin afterward. And then they wonder why their lower back is sore the next day…because your hamstrings are way too tight, dummy!