Ask your friends, your gym teacher, your dad, and anyone else you can think of how to get sculpted six-pack abs and I'll bet you'll hear the same answers: sit-ups and crunches, the two tried and true abdominal exercises that everyone knows.
Someone who watches too much television might tell you to get one of those machines on the infomercials that supposedly let you roll and twist your way to perfect abs.
The only problem with all of this well-meaning advice is: it is all wrong.
Sit-ups and crunches will not give you ripped abs.
These exercises will increase the strength of your abs, but not the size.
And sculpted abs means larger ab muscles.
Think of a marathon runner, who runs each day working his legs very hard, often for hours at a time.
His legs are obviously very strong, but are they muscular and chiseled? Usually they are not, often they are very thin.
Now think of a professional football player or a body builder.
They use machines and weight training to do small sets of reps with heavy resistance.
They will work their legs only twice or three times per week, and usually for less than an hour.
And their legs, in contrast to the runners' legs, are muscular and defined.
With our abdominal muscles, we want to be more like the body builder and less like the marathon runner.
This means that we will not be spending hours each day doing hundreds of sit-ups or crunches.
Instead, we will be doing weight training on our abdominal muscles using the heaviest weight we can handle, and we will be doing only small sets of the exercises.
In my opinion, three sets of eight reps each is about a magical number.
For instance, if you are at the gym you might try the abdominal crunch machine.
With this machine, you lean forward and press your chest against a cushioned bar that is hooked to weights.
Pushing forward with your chest, you raise the weights up.
If, after doing 8 reps, you feel like it was pretty easy and you could do about 40 of those, you should increase the weight resistance, not the number of repetitions.
After 8 to 10 reps, your muscles should be too tired to do any more without a short rest.
Now, you simply rest a few minutes and start the next set.
There is obviously a lot more to building great abs than replacing your sit-ups with weight resistance exercises, but that is a good start.
You will also want to think about protein intake, body fat percentage, and many other factors that all are part of having gorgeous, sculpted abs.
But if you get the proper nutrition and do the exercise, you will get the hard stomach that you have been wanting.
Someone who watches too much television might tell you to get one of those machines on the infomercials that supposedly let you roll and twist your way to perfect abs.
The only problem with all of this well-meaning advice is: it is all wrong.
Sit-ups and crunches will not give you ripped abs.
These exercises will increase the strength of your abs, but not the size.
And sculpted abs means larger ab muscles.
Think of a marathon runner, who runs each day working his legs very hard, often for hours at a time.
His legs are obviously very strong, but are they muscular and chiseled? Usually they are not, often they are very thin.
Now think of a professional football player or a body builder.
They use machines and weight training to do small sets of reps with heavy resistance.
They will work their legs only twice or three times per week, and usually for less than an hour.
And their legs, in contrast to the runners' legs, are muscular and defined.
With our abdominal muscles, we want to be more like the body builder and less like the marathon runner.
This means that we will not be spending hours each day doing hundreds of sit-ups or crunches.
Instead, we will be doing weight training on our abdominal muscles using the heaviest weight we can handle, and we will be doing only small sets of the exercises.
In my opinion, three sets of eight reps each is about a magical number.
For instance, if you are at the gym you might try the abdominal crunch machine.
With this machine, you lean forward and press your chest against a cushioned bar that is hooked to weights.
Pushing forward with your chest, you raise the weights up.
If, after doing 8 reps, you feel like it was pretty easy and you could do about 40 of those, you should increase the weight resistance, not the number of repetitions.
After 8 to 10 reps, your muscles should be too tired to do any more without a short rest.
Now, you simply rest a few minutes and start the next set.
There is obviously a lot more to building great abs than replacing your sit-ups with weight resistance exercises, but that is a good start.
You will also want to think about protein intake, body fat percentage, and many other factors that all are part of having gorgeous, sculpted abs.
But if you get the proper nutrition and do the exercise, you will get the hard stomach that you have been wanting.
SHARE
