Sexy Abs

Let's face it - abs can be sexy. And they should. But, most of us can only dream of having the kind of sexy abs we might see on TV or the magazines. The fact, though, that ordinary people can do it (and, being in a magazine does not make them less ordinary than the rest of us) means that it can be done. And it can. With persistence, patience - and having the right knowledge - we can all benefit from having a pair of trim, well-defined, sculpted, sexy abs.

Really? Tell me more

Firstly, you've got to focus on diet. Yes, 'diet' may be an evil word in most of our vocabulary, but diet (according to professionals) can account for 80% of our physique. This means that by focusing on diet, you're 80% there in getting the abs you want.

Abs are not the same as the rest of the body, in the sense that you don't 'build' them or 'work' them as far as size is concerned. Rather, you work at getting rid of body fat, which in turn exposes your sexy abs that you actually already have underneath the fat and water which covers them. You need to work your body fat ratio down to just below 13% for women, or 10% for men. This can be done easily with the proper diet of carbs, proteins and good fats. Plus, cardio training is essential. You will not get rid of body fat through doing exercises that focus on strengthening or firming your stomach muscles. You will only get rid of fat through cardio training and dieting correctly.

Cardio training has many other benefits as well, and is essential to your overall health. For losing fat, you need to spend about 20-30 minutes doing cardio training about three times a week. People with a slower metabolism should consider cardio training for 45 minutes, six to seven times a week. Cardio training can be done through running (using treadmills) or using elliptical machines, as well as swimming and many other exercises. Combining cardio training with a proper diet, and you will be well on your way to losing fat and seeing your abs.

The Exercising You Can Do

The above doesn't rule out exercising altogether, but it's important to focus on the right kind of exercises to do. Mostly, crunches, sit-ups or leg lifts will do very well. The secret of exercising your abs is to keep your exercises varied and 'natural.' What this means is that you should work with your abs in your exercises, understand how they work, and train them functionally. They are responsible for bending your body forwards, backwards and to the sides. Exercises that do this are very effective. Your abs also strengthen very easily, becoming quite resistant to a particular exercise that you may be doing. By varying your exercises, you train your lower, middle and upper abs, rather than just a specific part - and this leads to the firm, sexy abs you're looking for.

Mark Bennet is a fitness enthusiast always looking for the easier and quicker ways to get fit and look your best. Mark has some of the best strategies for real people to get and keep great abs at http://www.RealEasyAbs.com

Abs Exercise Machines - Do You Really Need One?

Many people say that abs exercise machines are the quickest, easiest and best way to get six pack abs. In one sense they're right, but in another totally different sense they're wrong. Keep reading and I'll explain why, and also why you don't need abs exercise machines to get the flat abs you want.

First, let's have a look at the different types of abs exercise machines that are available to buy.

1. Crunchers. These are the big odd looking cage type contraptions which you use to help guide you when you're doing crunches. You lie on your back with your head on a small pillow, and rest on your arms on the cruncher's side bars. As your contract your abs, the cage rolls up with your shoulder blades offering them extra support.

These machines (while although they're not technically "machines" in the sense that they have moving parts) are a waste of time. They offer no real benefit other than making you look like you're in an exercise DVD. You can easily perform exactly the same motion without the machine, and it's a lot cheaper!

2. Complicated gym machines. By this I mean the great big chairs, tables and who knows what else that make you feel like you're either going to the dentist, or being abducted by aliens! If you have to strap yourself in, hold on for fear of falling off or contort yourself and spend ages fiddling with various settings, it's not worth it.

There is one decent abs exercise machine in your local gym though, and that's the "Captain's Chair". This is basically a chair without a seat raised into the air. You stand up and grip the "arms" of the chair, brace your back against the chairs back, and then lift your knees to your chest. This exercise can be performed similarly by lying on the floor and raising your knees to your chest, but the Captain's Chair forces you to exert more effort and control over your entire core.

3. Electric ab belts. Have you ever used one of these? I'm talking about the ab belts which you strap around your waist, then plug into the wall. They zap you with small electrical charges for a few seconds, every few seconds. This forces your abdominal muscles to contract and tense. If you leave it on for a week, you should come out with six pack abs.. at least that's the theory.

Some people do have good results with electric ab belts, especially if they have a very busy lifestyle and can't afford 30 minutes a day for a little exercise. But generally the results you'll get from electric ab belts will be cosmetic - you won't see drastic improvements in your overall core strength, and it can be a pain to have to keep moving the electric pads around so you hit all the muscles you should.

4. Fitness wheels. These devices are a little hard to imagine if you haven't seen one already. Basically, it's a wheel with a handle sticking out of the center on either side. This means you can hold both handles and run the wheel along the floor. To use the machine, you lie on your front, putting your body weight on your toes and on your hands (holding onto the wheel). Now by contracting your abs you will pull the wheel towards you, and essentially do an upside down situp. When you release your abs, the wheel rolls away from you and you flatten out.

These machines can be tough to use - it takes a lot of balance and there is a distinct possibility of the wheel running away from you and you injuring yourself.

All in all, while ab exercise machines can be a bit of fun, they shouldn't replace a proper manual ab workout. All you need is a training mat, some floor space, some music if you want it, 30 minutes a day and a bit of elbow grease.

David Spencer is a fitness nutcase. He has spent years learning about exercise and just as long working on his own six pack abs. Getting your own flat abs is not as hard as everyone makes out - visit The Truth About Six Pack Abs to find out exactly how David and hundreds of others got theirs, and how you can get yours.

Slimming the Waist: Article 1 of 3 - The Abs Routine

Let's face it...there's a million different abdominal exercises and routines out there, and each one promises to have the right stuff to give you a six-pack, get you toned, remove those love handles, and fulfill any other elaborate plans you may have for your midsection. With so many choices, it can be difficult to decide which is best, or perhaps more importantly, which achieves your goals with the least amount of effort.

To simplify things a bit, I'm going to break abdominal training down into 3 basic categories: smart training, effective cardio, and proper nutrition. By the time you finish reading this series of three articles, you'll be equipped with 1) a quick and easy way to design your own abdominal routine using a simple set of rules (this article); 2) an explanation of how to incorporate both long and slow fat-burning cardio and quick and fast metabolism-boosting cardio into your program and 3) five simple nutritional rules to make your body a fat-burning machine.

Time to go to ab school. Since this isn't anatomy class, I won't waste your time naming the muscles and giving you strange Latin terms like "rectus". We'll go straight into the good stuff - how to design your own waist-slimming routine. This type of routine works best when you're able to devote an entire workout to core training alone. Your ab exercises should fall into a five basic categories:

WARM-UP:

The start of your routine needs to get the ab muscles "firing" in conjunction with the rest of your body. Basically, this means your warm-up exercise or exercises need to use the full body and center around a waist hinging action, such as:

Body Weight Squats: start in standing position, then "sit down" until your thighs are parallel to the floor, keeping your center of gravity back behind you.

Lunge with Overhead Push: lunge forward holding a weight, and as you stand out of the lunge, press the weight overhead.

Inchworm Crawl: with open space in front of you, start in a fully extended push-up position, walk the feet towards the hands as close as possible, then walk the hands away from the feet.

Complete 1 set of 10-20 reps for each of these exercises, then move on to...

STABILITY:

Stability exercises should be body weight only exercises that fatigue the abs with a high amount of reps and a low amount of resistance. These would include crunches, flutter kicks, reverse crunches, twists and anything else that doesn't require a weight or apparatus to accomplish. Choose 2 or 3 of these exercises, complete 15-20 reps for each, and after you've got a "burn" feeling in the abs, progress to the third section...

STABILITY WITH RESISTANCE:

Now that you've completed the stability exercises, you're going to add a weight, like a plate, dumbbell, medicine ball, or just plain gravity. Exercise examples would be an incline bench crunch, a weighted crunch, a weighted straight leg crunch or a medicine ball twist crunch (i.e. Russian Twists). Since your resistance is going up, your rep count will go down. Complete 10-15 reps for these exercises, and do them at a slower pace than the stability exercises...now your abs should be wide awake.

DYNAMIC CORE:

The difficulty of the exercises, in terms of movement complexity, is going to be the greatest with your dynamic core exercises. These should be done in a standing position, and should include a twisting, flexing, or rotating component that forces you to work against resistance. Examples of dynamic core exercises include:

Cable torso twists: hold a shoulder level handle attached to a cable apparatus at arm's length, and pull the cable across your body using the torso, not the shoulders.

Woodchoppers: begin with a medicine ball held over head, then "chop" down, bending at the knees and back, so that the ball endsbetween your feet. These can also be performed diagonally.

Around the World: holding a weight in your hands with the arms straight, draw giant circles with a weight or medicine ball, bending and extending at the knees and back as you drop from the high point to the low point of the circle.

Your heart rate will be the highest during this part of the workout and your reps should be low: 8-10 for each exercise is fine. Finally, for the last part of your routine...

UNBALANCED:

Here is the trickiest part of your routine. You need to find an exercise that throws you off balance. Here's one example: get into the pushup position and twist toward the ceiling with one arm only, opening your body in one direction. Then reverse and twist in the other direction, keeping both legs planted. Another example is a crawl crunch, where you assume a crawl position, extend both arm and leg on the same side, then crunch your elbow and knee together. As little as 5-10 repetitions will be more than enough for each exercise in the unbalance phase.

That's it! Put them all together and you will have a complete routine for your entire midsection. You're one step closer to slimming the waist. Many of the abdominal routines I design for online clients are based on these same principles. By signing up for personal training at WWW.PACIFICFIT.NET, you have access to multiple core workouts, complete with exercise picture and video galleries, as well as constant exercise and routine updates, and frequent evaluations to track your progress. In the next article of this series, I'll be telling you the fastest way to burn fat and lose weight with cardio. Until then, train smart!

Ben Greenfield

M.S. PE, NSCA-CPT, CSCS

elite@pacificfit.net

Ben Greenfield holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Sport Science and Exercise Physiology, and is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Personal Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Coach (NSCA-CPT & CSCS). For over 5 years, Ben Greenfield has coached and trained professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes, and helped hundreds of individuals achieve their personal fitness goals. Ben's expertise is now available for corporate wellness programs, triathletes, and individuals as http://www.pacificfit.net