One big misconception that some people have regarding getting a washboard stomach is that you should be working all these muscles separately. Because these individuals often envision the so-called ‘6-pack’, they think that you can divide this muscle up, working on it section by section.

Without a clean diet, six pack abs will never be yours. One thing you must realize is that while exercise is important, it’s only going to take you so far. No matter how many crunches or sit-up variations you perform, if you’ve got a solid layer of fat covering your stomach, your muscles are not going to be seen.

Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true.

While the abs definitely do consist of a few different muscles, all of these muscles are going to contract simultaneously, helping perform whatever movement is being asked of it. You can definitely target certain areas slightly more than others, but overall, you cannot solely isolate any one of the muscles in particular.

So, having said that, try not to do too many isolated ab exercises during your workout. While these can be nice in a sense that you’ll likely really ‘feel the burn’, they aren’t going to work as many muscle fibers as possible – which is your primary goal with any weight lifting session you perform.

The better thing to instead, is to do exercises that decrease your balance because that is what best calls your muscles into action.

Think doing ab crunches on the floor is good? Move those crunches onto an stability exercise ball.

This applies for other calisthenic exercises as well. Performing a set of push-ups? Why not move those onto an exercise ball as well? It’s the perfect opportunity to really challenge those muscles and help develop washboard abs. Simply place an exercise ball under your arms or under your feet and push-up from there. If you’re really ambitious, try both at the same time (note, use a spotter when doing this as there is a good chance you’ll roll off until you gain the skill necessary to balance).

The only time when you don’t want to decrease your stability too much, however, is when you’re lifting very heavy weights in major compound lifts (such as squats for instance). This could prove to be very dangerous because one small movement in the wrong direction due to being off balance could cause your form to go and that could lead to a severe injury.

So, keep your destabilization work to exercises that are performed with your body weight or very light weights.

By following these principles though, you can be sure that washboard abs are on their way for you.

Carlos Larsen

Recommends No Nonsense Muscle Building & Your Six Pack Quest, the two most effective training guide I have ever done and actually SEEN RESULTS!

Before you can start learing how to get six-pack abs and discover the truth about what it really takes to build a beach-worthy abdominal section, you must first expose the lies, myths and rumors. Before we talk about how to get six-pack abs, the right way, we must re-program your hard drive and empty the trash can of garbage you have been fed.

Because of all this hyped up and misguided information – even among so-called ‘fitness experts’ – you should skeptical of discerning about all abdominal training equipment and programs. Let’s first eliminate the top four ways not to get a six-pack:

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require expensive workout equipment promoted through obnoxious infomercials. You can’t flick on the TV anymore without seeing two new abdominal exercise machines being promoted at once. There are so many of them, that if you get suckered into these ‘ab workout’ gimmicks, you will be broke quicker than Ben Johnson sprints the 100 m dash! And get this: Of the $520 million dollars a year spent on exercise equipment, abdominal machines get a $208 million dollar piece of the pie!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require thousands or even hundreds of crunches a day. So much for the Brittany Spears ab workou! Crunches are decent but totally overused and associated with more being better. Crunches is a very general exercise and general exercises get general results. Excessive floor crunches shorten the abdominal wall, pull your head forward and emphasize poor posture. They also involve a very low level of stimulation which negelets adequate muscle fiber recruitment.

Learning how to get a six-pack does not involve starvation diets. Starvation diets starve the muscle when instead, you should be feeding the muscle. Guess what happens when you starve your body? Your metabolism shuts down out of survival and causes your body to store fat. Your body must get energy from somewhere so guess what gets sacrificed? That’s right, your precious muscle which is in fact responsible for a maintaining a high metabolism. Starve your muscle – great logic!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require fat burning pills. What did the last weight loss pill you bought do for you? The same thing the next one is going to do – nothing! Except give you a thinner wallet but not a thinner waist line. The entire concept of taking pills to ‘burn fat’ is built on a sandy foundation and misleading because diet pills only treat the symptons and not the root cause. Without focusing on the root problems of a flabby mid-section, like nutrition, lifestyle and proper training, you will just end up where you started – farther away from having a six-pack for summer instead of closer.

If just landed on earth from Mars today, and were able to avoid these four completely wrong ways to build a six-pac, than you will have an advantage over the rest of the world and be one enormous step closer to taking your shirt off with pride!

Carlos Larsen

The thing to remember is that whenever you are trying to work your core, everything works, for a certain period of time. Everything from high reps, low reps, weighted work, bodyweight work, stability ball exercises, and BOSU ball exercises – it all works until your body adapts and says, “This is easy, I’m not going to change unless you give me a new reason to adapt.”

Your ab training should be progressed from stable floor work with your body weight to a unstable surface with weighted work. Progressing to movements that will reduce your base of support as much as possible are the best ab workouts because they will call into play all the muscles within the core, especially those really deep that stable floor work can not target.

Such examples of floor ab exercises that would do this would be crunches, sit ups and leg raises. Eventually you want to do these same exercises against gravity, then a load and then on unstable surface like a stability ball. Body weight exercises like “front planks” and “side planks” should be the foundation of a core program and progressed to one arm planks in the frontal and side planes and then eventually on a stability ball or BOSU ball for further recruitment.

The best ab workouts to make your abs “pop” would be a variety of weighted movements. I’m sure you’ve skinny guys with a flat stomach but no “eye popping” abs, which is because they have not developed the actual abdominal muscle, just like every other body part. Part of getting nicely chiseled abs is going to be developing the muscles underneath the fat, and weighted ab crunches with cables or on a stability ball with a heavy dumbbell will do this best.

During all your ab workouts be sure to get a full stretch during the eccentric phase of your ab exercises. Going through an entire range of motion on the way up (if doing a crunch on the floor or ball) is not necessary, however, you should be “crunching” your upper abs onto your lower abs during each rep to maximize the burn, recruitment and full development.

The one weighted exercise you will not find in my programs is weighted side bends, as this could make you look wider in the waste, distracting from creating a lean image.

One concerning question most people have is regarding lower ab workouts, typically the most troubling spot. Yes, hip flexion (emphasis more so on lower abs) is important to perform and should be done first in the workout but the reality of the matter is that you cannot specifically separate your abs into upper and lower components. Whenever you perform any type of ab movement you should automatically be focusing on working both the upper and lower portion at the same time.

Good exercise to definitely direct a little more force into the lower area would be the progression of lying leg raises, lying leg raises on a incline and eventually hanging leg raises fully vertical. Lying leg raises on a stability pull is also an extremely challenging and advanced exercise to create razor sharp abdominals.

Finally, the last thing to consider is when you are going to perform your ab workout is training frequency. Again, generally speaking, the more the better assuming your abdominals have recovered. Whether you want to perform it at the end of your workout, before your workout, during your workout or on a day of it’s own is up to you. My ab workouts incorporate all methods depending on if you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced. Some theories of that warn you not to start with abs is because abs work as a synergistic muscle for so many of the other exercises you’ll do, if you pre-fatigue them before the start of the workout, you may not progress as much during the rest of your workout. I don’t agree with this and if you’re abs are your weakest link then they should be given first priority when you are the most fresh, the start of your workout.

Incorporating a specific ab workout is only a small part of the battle – diet, lifestyle and overall caloric expenditure through weight training and cardio are the true building blocks to creating a sexy and desired mid section.

Carlos Larsen

If you want to get ripped this summer and get turning heads from all the guys who want to be like you and from all the girls who just WANT you i recommend getting a copy of Vince Delmonte’s Guides, No Nonsense Muscle Building & Your Six Pack Quest

When it comes to getting a solid six pack, doing the right ab exercises is crucial. You can spend hours doing needless sit-ups that aren’t really going to have all that much benefit, much to your disappointment. Taking the time to choose smart ab exercises will save you not only gym time, but a great deal of frustration as well. In this article we will discuss the best lower ab exercises and the best home ab exercises as well.

The best movements for the abdominal muscles are going to be ones that reduce your overall stability. The reason for this is because this will require all your muscle tissues, even the ones deep within the core, to contract in order to maintain balance. When you perform regular sit-ups, for example, they are really only going to target the more superficial muscles; one that will still help, but not get you near the results you could be seeing.

So what ab exercises are ones that reduce your balance?

Basically, anything done on an unstable surface is going to get the job done. This would include movements such as walking across a balance beam, performing one leg squats, one arm shoulder presses, or bent over dumbbell rows standing on one leg and of course, utilizing an exercise ball for any laying abdominal movement you perform. Working on a BOSU ball and stability ball ab exercises are also excellent options. As long as you have a set of free weights and stability ball then these would qualify as your best home ab exercises as well.

By far the most effective lower ab exercises are hanging leg raises while you use your lower abs to rotate your pelvis which is the secret to performing this effectively. Lying leg raises, lying leg raises on a 45 degree incline and cable crunches are also rock hard ab exercises.

Another area you might want to venture into with your ab exercises are those that utilize heavy weights.

While this will not necessarily get you ‘cut’ so that all your individual muscles are showing – that takes having low levels of body fat, what weighted movements will do is help further build the muscle tissue and make your abs “pop”.

The more muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolic rate will then be, so in an indirect way, that could in fact help you burn off excess body fat.

Furthermore, doing weighted movements will also increase your strength greatly, reducing the risk of injuries from any other type of exercise you may attempt. Weighted ball crunches with a stability ball on your chest is my favorite home ab exercises.

When choosing when to perform your ab exercises, if you are looking for performance, do them on a separate day from all your other work. Just like any muscle group, you want to be fresh when you do them.

If, on the other hand, you are more just doing them to help build some strength, but more to round out your exercise program, then you should be doing them at the end of your workout session. This will prevent them from fatiguing early, because they are going to be predominately used in all the other lifts you perform (heavy squats for example).

In many cases this rule can be bent though. For example, if a client comes to me and their abs are the weakest muscle group then performing them at the end of the workout makes no sense because they will be pre fatigued from the workout and you will not be able to train them as intensely so prioritizing your abs at the start of the workout can become the exception in this case.

So, next time you are creating your workout and are picking out ab exercises, keep these points in mind. Having good dedication to performing these exercises on a regular basis and then following a clean diet based around raw vegetables and proteins are the two main components to developing that six-pack you’re hoping for.

Carlos Larsen

Recommends No Nonsense Muscle Building & Your Six Pack Quest to bulk up or lean up over the next few months, but ONLY if your ready.

The biggest area you need to focus on when trying to obtain 6 pack abs is going to be on your diet. Like it or not, the old saying that ‘abs are made in the kitchen’, is probably one of the most truthful statements in the fitness industry. If your diet isn’t in line, your stomach is going to show it.

So, what should you be doing with your diet?

First, ensure you are getting enough protein. Not only is protein going to form the key building blocks you need to build muscle tissue, but it’s also going to provide you with a better feeling of fullness than eating just carbohydrates alone would for example. Protein is more “expensive” than any other macronutrient meaning that your body will burn more calories breaking down protein compared to carbs and fats.

Next, don’t be afraid of dietary fat that comes from primarily monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats such as olive oils, fish oils, a mix of nuts, natural peanut butter and avocado. While it’s true that eating fat will increase your calories fast, as long as you keep it between 20-30% it can be one of the best things to get 6 pack abs fast. The important point here is that dietary fat helps keep your insulin level stable, which, when high enough can actually cause fat gain itself.

Furthermore, dietary fat will keep you feeling the fullest for the longest duration in time; longer than both protein or carbohydrates would. Interestingly, some diets high in fat can get you 6 pack abs fast because your body learn to metabolize fat for energy.

So, while you do need to watch it, be sure you are getting some in your diet.

Finally, when it comes to carbohydrate intake and getting 6 pack abs, you want to focus most of your carbohydrate intake around the post workout period.

Why?

The biggest reason for this is because this is when your body is going to need those carbohydrates the most and will really suck them up into the muscle tissue. When you eat them at this time, it is least likely that they will turn into body fat.

Additionally, consuming carbohydrates during this period will also help to aid with muscle recovery and repair, so that means less down time from the gym for you.

If getting 6 pack abs fast is your goal than each meal you should consist of 1-2 cups of raw vegetables to control insulin levels, improve absorption of your protein and flood your body with vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants.

So, if you are aiming to get 6 pack abs in the coming months, have a good hard look at your diet. That is the big secret that must not be overlooked if you are to succeed.

Carlos Larsen

Recommends No Nonsense Muscle Building & Your Six Pack Quest to bulk up or lean up over the next few months, but ONLY if your ready.

Watch me train my abs through this killer circuit I do for conditioning and muscular endurance…

…it’s normal if it feels like you’re abs are ripping after trying this killer ab workout.

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