hepennypacker52
08-30-2004, 09:30 AM
Getting That Visible Sixpack
Without a doubt, the most misunderstood part about getting that "sixpack" is actually how to get it. Most people believe that doing 1,000 crunches a day, 6 days a week, will get them that sixpack they've always dreamed of. This is wrong. It also leads us to:
*Ab principle #1: Making your abs visible is all about how low your BF (bodyfat) percent is*
What's this mean? It means that no matter how many situps you do, or ab machines you use, if you have a high BF% you will not be able to see your abs.
Diet
Your diet is very important in the process of shedding fat off your body. It's just common sense that you can't stuff twinkies down your pie hole and lose fat at the same time. To lose weight, you must go on a weight loss diet, that's also common sense. How much (or little actually) do you need to eat? This brings us to:
*Ab principle #2: You must eat less than your maintenance caloric intake*
If you want to find our your true maintenance caloric intake, you'll have to monitor your diet for a couple weeks. Record everything you eat, and all the macronutrient values (protein, carbs, and fat) of what you eat. Measure your weight before the start of the week, and at the end of the week. If you're weight stayed the same, find the average amount of calories you took in each day, and that's what your body needs to maintain your current weight.
Ok, so how much less should I be taking in each day? Start off with reducing your maintenance calories by 200. Check your weight after a week. If you're losing weight as much as you want to weekly, keep that amount of calories. If you barely lose anything, reduce total calories by another 200. Keep doing this until your satisfied with what you're losing. You shouldn't have to go below 12 x bodyweight, assuming that you're doing cardio.
Now what macronutrient ratio's should you be using when trying to lose weight? Make 20-30% of your total calories come from fats, good fats of course, try and stay away from eating too many saturated fats. You should also be taking 1.3-1.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight. The rest of your diet should come from carbs.
*A note on carbs: simple sugars should be avoided when trying to lose weight, with the acception of post-workout to restore glycogen. For pre and post workout nutrition, refer here: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=272067*
*Ab principle #3: Protein consumption should be 1.3-1.5g/lb of bodyweight*
*Ab principle #4: Avoid simple sugars, accept post workout*
*Ab principle #5: Have 1 cheat meal every week*
Eat absolutely whatever you want, this is your meal to enjoy after the good week you've had following your strict diet. Give yourself this meal, it won't mess you up. What will mess you up is after a couple weeks of following a totally strict diet, you just go on an eating binge and gain back all the fat you just lost.
*Ab principle #6: Don't go on a low carb diet*
I'm not going to go into details with this, but we all know what you will lose weight on a low carb diet, but it's not weight that you will actually keep off for a long time.
That wraps up the basics for dieting for fat loss. Now on to cardio.
Cardio
Cardio is essential when looking to maximize fat loss, it won't be the "holy grail" that will make you lose 20lbs fast, diet and proper weight training will do that for you, but it will help, plus cardio has great health benifits. There are different ways of approaching cardio.
High intensity cardio. The most popular of these is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Here are some good links to HIIT:
http://www.wsu.edu/~strength/hiit.htm
http://www.musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp
http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0101/cf.htm
Low intensity cardio. When you do high intensity cardio, it usually takes about 20 minutes, while doing low intensity cardio takes longer. But in reality, the amount of calories burned is almost the same, no matter if you run it, or walk it. Some very overweight people can't handle HIIT, they could run into serious medical problems. Low intensity cardio is the perfect answer for them. Start off low and gradually build your time walking up, or increase the pace a little. Some links on low intensity cardio:
http://www.janatrains.com/default.asp?id=3&newsaction=newsdetail&articleid=20
http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/shane2.htm
*Ab principle #7: Perform high intensity cardiovascular exercise 2-3 times weekly*
There's no need to kill yourself doing cardio 6 times per week. Three HIIT sessions is plenty of cardio to burn fat.
*Ab principle #8: Perform low intensity cardiovascular exercise 3-6 times weekly*
There's no problem with taking a long walk every morning, but for someone extremely overweight, 3 times a week would be a better starting platform.
Training the Abdominals
Doing any type of ab workout won't get you a sixpack, we've already covered that. But it still is good to train the abdominals with resistance, because:
[list]
The abdominals are a muscle, and they shouldn't be neglected, just like you wouldn't neglect your chest.
Having a good "core" will also help and provide more safety for the big compound movements (ie squat, deadlift)
*Ab principle #8: Train abs with resistance, with 8-15 reps*
*Ab principle #9: Do not do ulta high rep ab work*
You won't do yourself any good busting yourself with sets of 1,000 crunches. Keep reps low, like any other exercise, with about 8-15 reps, and use resistance.
What exercises do you do? You can do a search anywhere and you'll find a bunch of ab exercises, but I'll give a sample one:
Swiss ball crunches
Hanging leg raises
Side bends
For each exercise, do 3 sets of 8-15 reps. Add weight when and if possible. Perform 1-3 times a week. It's nothing too complicated, and very easy to make your own ab workout.
This wraps up ab training and how to get those visible abs. And don't forget:
*Ab principle #10: Stay motivated, and be consistent!*
Here's all of the principles again:
*Ab principle #1: Making your abs visible is all about how low your BF (bodyfat) percent is*
*Ab principle #2: You must eat less than your maintenance caloric intake*
*Ab principle #3: Protein consumption should be 1.3-1.5g/lb of bodyweight*
*Ab principle #4: Avoid simple sugars, accept post workout*
*Ab principle #5: Have 1 cheat meal every week*
*Ab principle #6: Do not go on a low carb diet*
*Ab principle #7: Perform high intensity cardiovascular exercise 2-3 times weekly*
*Ab principle #8: Train abs with resistance, with 8-15 reps*
*Ab principle #9: Do not do ulta high rep ab work*
*Ab principle #10: Stay motivated, and be consistent!*
Without a doubt, the most misunderstood part about getting that "sixpack" is actually how to get it. Most people believe that doing 1,000 crunches a day, 6 days a week, will get them that sixpack they've always dreamed of. This is wrong. It also leads us to:
*Ab principle #1: Making your abs visible is all about how low your BF (bodyfat) percent is*
What's this mean? It means that no matter how many situps you do, or ab machines you use, if you have a high BF% you will not be able to see your abs.
Diet
Your diet is very important in the process of shedding fat off your body. It's just common sense that you can't stuff twinkies down your pie hole and lose fat at the same time. To lose weight, you must go on a weight loss diet, that's also common sense. How much (or little actually) do you need to eat? This brings us to:
*Ab principle #2: You must eat less than your maintenance caloric intake*
If you want to find our your true maintenance caloric intake, you'll have to monitor your diet for a couple weeks. Record everything you eat, and all the macronutrient values (protein, carbs, and fat) of what you eat. Measure your weight before the start of the week, and at the end of the week. If you're weight stayed the same, find the average amount of calories you took in each day, and that's what your body needs to maintain your current weight.
Ok, so how much less should I be taking in each day? Start off with reducing your maintenance calories by 200. Check your weight after a week. If you're losing weight as much as you want to weekly, keep that amount of calories. If you barely lose anything, reduce total calories by another 200. Keep doing this until your satisfied with what you're losing. You shouldn't have to go below 12 x bodyweight, assuming that you're doing cardio.
Now what macronutrient ratio's should you be using when trying to lose weight? Make 20-30% of your total calories come from fats, good fats of course, try and stay away from eating too many saturated fats. You should also be taking 1.3-1.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight. The rest of your diet should come from carbs.
*A note on carbs: simple sugars should be avoided when trying to lose weight, with the acception of post-workout to restore glycogen. For pre and post workout nutrition, refer here: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=272067*
*Ab principle #3: Protein consumption should be 1.3-1.5g/lb of bodyweight*
*Ab principle #4: Avoid simple sugars, accept post workout*
*Ab principle #5: Have 1 cheat meal every week*
Eat absolutely whatever you want, this is your meal to enjoy after the good week you've had following your strict diet. Give yourself this meal, it won't mess you up. What will mess you up is after a couple weeks of following a totally strict diet, you just go on an eating binge and gain back all the fat you just lost.
*Ab principle #6: Don't go on a low carb diet*
I'm not going to go into details with this, but we all know what you will lose weight on a low carb diet, but it's not weight that you will actually keep off for a long time.
That wraps up the basics for dieting for fat loss. Now on to cardio.
Cardio
Cardio is essential when looking to maximize fat loss, it won't be the "holy grail" that will make you lose 20lbs fast, diet and proper weight training will do that for you, but it will help, plus cardio has great health benifits. There are different ways of approaching cardio.
High intensity cardio. The most popular of these is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Here are some good links to HIIT:
http://www.wsu.edu/~strength/hiit.htm
http://www.musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp
http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0101/cf.htm
Low intensity cardio. When you do high intensity cardio, it usually takes about 20 minutes, while doing low intensity cardio takes longer. But in reality, the amount of calories burned is almost the same, no matter if you run it, or walk it. Some very overweight people can't handle HIIT, they could run into serious medical problems. Low intensity cardio is the perfect answer for them. Start off low and gradually build your time walking up, or increase the pace a little. Some links on low intensity cardio:
http://www.janatrains.com/default.asp?id=3&newsaction=newsdetail&articleid=20
http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/shane2.htm
*Ab principle #7: Perform high intensity cardiovascular exercise 2-3 times weekly*
There's no need to kill yourself doing cardio 6 times per week. Three HIIT sessions is plenty of cardio to burn fat.
*Ab principle #8: Perform low intensity cardiovascular exercise 3-6 times weekly*
There's no problem with taking a long walk every morning, but for someone extremely overweight, 3 times a week would be a better starting platform.
Training the Abdominals
Doing any type of ab workout won't get you a sixpack, we've already covered that. But it still is good to train the abdominals with resistance, because:
[list]
The abdominals are a muscle, and they shouldn't be neglected, just like you wouldn't neglect your chest.
Having a good "core" will also help and provide more safety for the big compound movements (ie squat, deadlift)
*Ab principle #8: Train abs with resistance, with 8-15 reps*
*Ab principle #9: Do not do ulta high rep ab work*
You won't do yourself any good busting yourself with sets of 1,000 crunches. Keep reps low, like any other exercise, with about 8-15 reps, and use resistance.
What exercises do you do? You can do a search anywhere and you'll find a bunch of ab exercises, but I'll give a sample one:
Swiss ball crunches
Hanging leg raises
Side bends
For each exercise, do 3 sets of 8-15 reps. Add weight when and if possible. Perform 1-3 times a week. It's nothing too complicated, and very easy to make your own ab workout.
This wraps up ab training and how to get those visible abs. And don't forget:
*Ab principle #10: Stay motivated, and be consistent!*
Here's all of the principles again:
*Ab principle #1: Making your abs visible is all about how low your BF (bodyfat) percent is*
*Ab principle #2: You must eat less than your maintenance caloric intake*
*Ab principle #3: Protein consumption should be 1.3-1.5g/lb of bodyweight*
*Ab principle #4: Avoid simple sugars, accept post workout*
*Ab principle #5: Have 1 cheat meal every week*
*Ab principle #6: Do not go on a low carb diet*
*Ab principle #7: Perform high intensity cardiovascular exercise 2-3 times weekly*
*Ab principle #8: Train abs with resistance, with 8-15 reps*
*Ab principle #9: Do not do ulta high rep ab work*
*Ab principle #10: Stay motivated, and be consistent!*