The stereotype symbol of fitness… a topic of myths and legends… a physical trait most people will never acquire in their lives. You might have had rocked it during your younger years, but with age it vanished and a comfortable layer of fat has found its way around your waist. You’re right, this article is going to teach you how to obtain a set of rock-solid six pack abs. Most people are extremely creative in finding the most amazing excuses and theories on how it’s impossible for them to acquire a level of leanness that will reveal their abs. From thyroid conspiracies to their family genes. There seems to be a unique reason for everyone why it’s impossible to see their abs. In reality, it doesn’t take rocket science to reveal your abs, nor does it require the moon and all the planets to be lined up parallel to each other every 500 years. All it takes is the right information, discipline and the right lifestyle choices that will allow you to stay lean effortlessly. Once you’ve obtained the information given in this article, you will have all the knowledge you need to shred of the excessive pounds of fat and finally rock that impressive, washboard abs you’ve always wanted.
The reason why most people cannot see their abs is simply because they carry around too much body fat around their waist. Having excessive amounts of body fat is the result of eating too many calories on a consistent basis. Achieving an amazing looking midsection will require two extremely important things. The first is a decent amount of abdominal development. The second is a low body fat percentage. The number one best thing you can do to improve your overall physical appearance is to get rid of excessive body fat. I find that the sweet spot for men is between 8 and 12 percent body fat to look their best and feel their best. Not only will your abs be visible at this level of leanness, your facial features and full body aesthetics will massively improve simply by reaching a respectable level of leanness. There’s a caveat though, which is if your abdominal muscles are severely underdeveloped, your abs will not have the popping effect that you want when you take your shirt off.
Sculpting your abs
No matter how lean you are, if you lack muscular development, you will have nothing to show for. Therefore, the very first thing you need to do to have an amazing set of abs and an amazing physique in general, is to follow a well-designed resistance training routine. This can be a weight training routine or a bodyweight training routine. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, the most important thing is that you train your muscles to handle more and more resistance on big compound movements such as the squat, the bench press, the chin up, the overhead press and the deadlift. Applying the concept of progressive overload on big compound movements will give you the best bang for your buck when it comes to stimulating large amounts of muscle mass with only a couple of movements in a short period of time. The core plays an extremely important role to maintain good posture and to stabilize the weight when performing most big compound movements. It’s only when we have built a decent amount of muscle size that we will be able to reap the benefits of sporting a low body fat percentage. Supplementary to your big compound exercises, you can throw in direct abdominal targeted isolation exercises to make sure that your midsection gets stimulated to its maximum potential. If you already perform a properly designed resistance training routine, there won’t be a need to perform 100 variations of crunches or leg raises, you only need about 6 to 9 additional sets per week of direct ab work to really make them stand out, since they already receive a lot of training volume from your bigger lifts.
My favorite direct abdominal exercises added to my routine for optimal ab development are weighted crunch variations such as the seated cable crunch and the declined angle roman chair crunch. The other exercise I experience to be extremely effective are leg raise variations, such as the hanging leg raise, which can also be permed with additional weight if you have the required core strength for it.
Now you might say: “I don’t care about developing my other muscle groups, I just want to sport a rock-solid set of abs!”. Well, if you’re not interested in building up your physique entirely, you’ll have to focus on hitting the abs hard by performing direct ab work 2-3 times per week with about 9 to 12 sets of core exercises such as crunch and leg raise variations that allow for progressive tension overload to occur. Your abs are a muscle group just like any other muscle group and shouldn’t be targeted with thousands of reps on a daily basis, as a lot of old school myths claim. They simply need to be stimulated at least twice per week with sufficient training volume to allow for strength gains to occur. I will say though that if you want to maximize your abdominal development, you’re better off training your whole body with big compound movements. This is because the abdominal muscles play an extremely important role in the body supporting the weight to keep the body upright in a lot while performing heavy work. If your body doesn’t require a midsection able to handle heavy weights, it will not stimulate the amount of growth necessary to handle heavy weights. Therefore, the best bang for your buck to create the best possible core is to perform a full body resistance training routine, including pull ups, squats, deadlifts, push ups and overhead presses, combined with some direct supplementary ab work.
Here’s an example of a full body routine with supplementary ab work at the end:
● Chin ups 3×6-10
● Dumbbell bench press 3×6-10
● Squat 3×6-10
● Upright row superset with rear delt fly 3×8-12
● Dumbbell bicep curl superset with Triceps rope pushdown 3×8-12
● Cable crunch 3×8-15
Or if you simply want to focus solely on your ab muscularity and aren’t interested in developing your physique entirely (you should though), you can do this by performing the routine below 2 to 3 times per week on non-consecutive days e.g. Monday, Wednesday and Friday:
● A leg raise variation: Hanging leg raises (weighted if possible) 2-4×8-15
● A crunch variation: e.g. Roman chair crunch 2-4×8-15
Your rectus abdominis, the superficial layer of muscle that we love to call the ‘six pack’ is a muscle just like any other, so we should treat it like any other muscle group and train it accordingly.
How to eat your way to a six pack
Training is one half of the quest to achieving that rock solid washboard abs you’ve been longing to see in the mirror. The other half is tied to what you put in your mouth. As discussed earlier, no matter how muscular or well developed your core is, if you have a layer of cushioning over it, it won’t be visible to the eye. In order to see your abs well, you will most likely have to work your way down to a low body fat percentage of around 10%. I like to use the 8 to 12 percent range because everyone is different and some people see their abs visibly at 12 percent, while others will have to diet down a little harder and will only see great results at 8 percent depending on individual factors.
So, what is it that you should eat? Is there some magical fat burning food or are there any magical diets out there that will melt away fat faster than others? No. Losing weight all comes down to the simple law of thermodynamics. In order words: calories in versus calories out is all that matters for weight loss. If you take in less energy than you burn on a daily or even weekly basis, you will lose weight. The opposite is true as well, if you take in more energy than you burn on a consistent basis, you will gain weight. No rocket science has been told up until this point, right? In conclusion: we must eat in an energy deficit, a calorie deficit, to lose weight.
A lot of people start crash dieting when they want to lose weight, but that’s simply something that is unsustainable in the long term. What we want to do is to adopt an approach that will get you lean relatively effortlessly and that will be sustainable in the long term. The best way to do this is to put yourself in a moderate calorie deficit. By creating a moderate calorie deficit of around 10-20% of your daily calorie intake, you will gradually lose weight without suffering from the negative side effects of crash dieting. This is a way more enjoyable process that allows you to still eat a significant amount of food, that will keep you feeling energetic and that will maintain a balanced hormone profile.
For someone who needs 3000 calories per day to maintain his current weight and wants to put himself in a moderate calorie deficit of let’s say 15%, that translates into creating a calorie deficit of 450 calories per day. His new calorie target for the day in order to lose weight will be around 2550 calories per day. This calorie intake allows the trainee to still eat a decent amount of food on a daily basis. What I advise you to do is to fill up on 80% healthy, micronutrient dense foods from natural unprocessed sources. The remainder of your calories can come from a daily treat to satisfy your cravings. Doing this will make sure that you stay healthy, are nutritionally satisfied and aren’t feeling your like ‘dieting’. This is a plan in which a lot of extremely fit people find long term success and sustainability. Consistency is key to achieve success in life. This truth is no different in fitness. If you can’t find what works long term, you won’t succeed in the long term.
Now notice that I said losing weight, not body fat. To make sure that the weight you are shedding off your body comes from body fat, we must make sure that we signal the body properly to hold on to our hard earned muscle mass. Doing this is pretty easy and requires only two things. These two things are performing a well-designed resistance training routine and eating enough protein. Performing a properly structured resistance training routine has been covered in the first part of this article and more information about this topic can be found in other articles on the site. What concerns our protein intake, don’t make it too complicated and don’t overthink it. Recent scientific studies have shown that a protein intake of 0.8g per lb of bodyweight (= 1.8g per kg of bodyweight is) is optimal for the natural lifter to both gain muscle mass on a muscle gaining phase and to maintain muscle mass on a fat loss phase. There’s no reason to go overboard with your protein intake as it won’t have any additional benefits. I suggest respecting these recommendations since you are eating in a fixed calorie intake and since quality fats and carbohydrate sources are extremely important for optimal health, hormonal balance, good workouts and life quality in general I highly suggest not to leave them out. Just to sum it up, here are the dietary recommendations for losing fat, maintaining muscle mass and having a rock hard midsection:
● Eat in a moderate calorie deficit between 10% to 20% depending on your starting point
● Eat 0.8g of protein per pound (= 1.8g per kilo) of bodyweight per day
● Fill up the rest of your calories with a good mix of carbs and fats
● 80% of quality, nutritionally dense foods and if you have sweet cravings, save 20% of your daily calories to fit in a treat
There you have it. You now have the proper knowledge on how to set up a successful, sustainable plan to get a rocking set of abs and to maintain them for the rest of your life. There’s no excuse anymore not to achieve this goal. All you need to do now is to take action applying what you’ve just learned.
Kevin Mahjoubi