Another Exercise to Create Those Sexy Six-Pack Abs

This exercise will help add to the "WOW!" factor when people see you in a swimsuit. It is a great workout not only for your abdominal complex but also for your lower back and for overall body strength in general. It is sounds extremely simple to explain. Let me assure you that the first few times you attempt it you'll find it to be quite difficult. However, after a week or two you will have mastered the motion and be able to increase the amount of weight you are using, thus exponentially improving the exercise results. This exercise is one more "arrow in your quiver" to get the abdominal look you want.

The exercise is called the "Russian Twist." It was taught to me by Jim Cawley, the owner of Dynamax Medicine Balls. I don't normally mention specific products in my writing but his product is pretty much the industry standard for medicine balls and I want you to know how to get one.

Jim is a fine gentleman living in Buda, Texas, where he makes those great medicine balls. The balls are available in two-pound increments from 4 pounds to 20 pounds. I would highly recommend getting at least one as they are among the most versatile pieces of exercise equipment ever invented. To show medicine balls versatility and timelessness, I read that one of the U.S. Presidents in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt I believe, would set-up a volleyball net on the White House lawn and have the staff divided into two teams. One team would throw a medicine ball over the net and if the other team was unable to catch it, a point was scored by the throwing team. The medicine balls pre-date Teddy Roosevelt, but I believe that example helps show the versatility of the ball in exercise.

To perform the Russian Twist, begin by sitting on the floor with a medicine ball in your hands. I recommend you start with a four-pound ball until you have mastered this movement. When you have mastered the exercise, you can increase the weight of the ball. With the ball in your hands, tilt your upper-body back to about a 45 degree angle. Now raise your feet about six inches off the ground while keeping them together. The only part of you body in contact with the ground is your glutes. While maintaining your balance, slowly move the medicine ball around your waist to one side and touch the floor with the ball. Immediately move the ball to the other side of your body and touch the ground with it on that side. Each time the ball touches the ground is considered one rep. Try to do 10 reps the first time. The exercise will seem awkward and unstable at first but I promise your form will improve drastically after only a week or two.

As I mentioned in a previous article about abdominal exercise, let me remind you that big determinants to how your abdominals look are your nutrition and your well-rounded exercise routine. You have to have both of those in place to get visible results from ANY ab exercise. Despite television ads to the contrary, it's impossible to "spot reduce" fat from a particular body part. If you have a "beer belly" or this is the only exercising you do, we will make your abs stronger and more toned but a layer of body fat will cover up your six-pack treasure. If you want those abs to be visible, the bottom-line is to make sure you are doing your part with a good nutrition program and a solid exercise plan.

When I'm performing this exercise I normally use a 12-pound ball (the heaviest at my facility) and do 30 to 40 reps per set for 4 sets. It will take a little while but soon you will be doing the same number of reps and sets and maybe even surpassing my work. The Russian Twist is one more step down the road to sexy six-pack abs!

Cliff Wiese has been active in fitness, sports, and sport psychology since 1981. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, as well as a Sports Performance Coach. He works with a varied international clientele, ranging from world-class athletes to pre and post rehabilitation patients to Special Olympians. A speaker and writer in high demand, Cliff can be reached by email at cwiese@lycos.com or by telephone in the USA at 979-229-6276.

Cliff attended Schreiner University on athletic and leadership scholarship and has done graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is active in Special Olympics as a Powerlifting Coach and is a volunteer grant writer for a number of charities, primarily organizations involving at-risk children. Cliff is also personally active in sport and has won championships in five different sports. He is currently finishing his first book, aimed at creating and sustaining successful and life-long workout routines for non-exercisers.

Your Abs Workout Is The Key To Your Six Pack

Your abs workout is one half of a two part "attack plan" for six pack abs. An abs workout coupled with an abs diet is what gives you super defined flat abs. The diet's main function is to reduce the amount of bodyfat you carry so that your ab muscles can poke through and become visible. Your abs workout is designed to strengthen your ab muscles and increase their size and separation so you get the ripped "six pack of beer" look. If you don't want rippling abs, keep up the abs diet but lower the intensity of your abs workout.

To get the best definition possible, the best separation of individual muscle groups (note: your rectus abdominis is actually one single muscle, but has several mini-muscle groups within it. That's what forms your six pack. They'll all part of the same muscle, but they are separated by small areas of tendons and ligaments) and the best overall look, you must follow 3 key principles.

1. Increase strength. Improving overall core strength is a very important part of your abs workout. Having a stable and powerful mid-section will give you the base that you need to perform more advanced exercises to target the other two key principles.

To develop your strength, perform exercises more quickly but still with as much control as you can. If you're already quite strong, you can use weights to boost the difficulty of the exercises. For example, if you're doing sit ups, put a few potatoes in a pillow case and hold it to your chest while you do each repetition. If you're doing vertical leg crunches, strap some ankle weights on and see if you feel the difference.

2. Increase size. If your abs workout increases the strength of your abs, you will see an increase in size too. Bigger abs means they're more likely to show through your body fat, and once you get the separation down, they'll really pop out. To gain size, go for slow reps of the difficult exercises. This is a traditional bodybuilding technique, using heavy weights and controlled repetitions to engage as many muscle fibers as possible for each exercise.

As mentioned above, you can use weights to increase the difficulty, but there are also many natural bodyweight exercises which you can do without weights.

3. Increase separation. Definition comes through two factors in your abs workout - low bodyfat and well separated ab muscles. To ensure you get proper separation and maximum definition, do plenty of cardio so that your bodyfat is low and your skin is tight over your ab muscles, and then make sure you target the abs from many angles within your abs workout. Do lots of different types of abs exercise, and do larger numbers of repetitions to improve overall tone and shape.

A basic abs workout should be planned around your daily routine, and should aim to attack each of the three principles above throughout the week. Go for one of the principles each day to keep yourself interested and motivated, and to keep your body reacting to the new ab exercises you're throwing at it.

Having six pack abs is all about a proper abs workout. If you want to discover how easy it is to organise your abs workout and exactly which exercises you should be including for the best results, check out the The Truth About Six Pack Abs.

David Spencer is a fitness and six pack abs nutcase. He's spent years learning about weight loss and improving muscle definition, and working on his own six pack abs. Start your abs workout today, and have your very own six pack abs in no time.

Best Flat Tummy Exercises for Great Female Abs

Are there flat tummy exercises that are the best for great female abs? Abs-olutely! To make this list, the female abs exercises must be safe, effective and can be done nearly anywhere. Your abs can be worked out every day. Here are great flat tummy exercises:

1. Tummy Isometric Crunch - exhale, then suck in your stomach as far as you can, hold for about 15 seconds. Relax and breathe. Visualize moving your bellybutton straight toward your back. Holding in your tummy muscles and tensing your abs is a good way of firming and strengthening them. You will also become more aware of how to control your tummy muscles. Repeat several times. This exercise can be done anywhere, anytime.

Note - if you have high blood pressure, do not hold your breath for extended periods of time.

2. Rectus Abdominis Tummy Exercises (doesn't that sound great?):

a. Lie on your back on the floor with bent knees and your feet flat on the floor, knees and feet spread apart the width of your hips.
b. Place your hands gently on the sides of your head for support, spreading your elbows so you cannot see them.
c. With your chin tucked toward your chest, gently curl upward and forward so that your head, neck and shoulder blades lift off the floor and your lower back presses against the floor (if you want, start with your head resting on a pillow which has your head and neck in the correct position to begin).
d. Pause just a moment, then gently return to the starting position.
e. Repeat several times.

Note - do not use your arms to complete the curl. If you can see your elbows, you're cheating. Do not put your feet under anything since this lessens the effectiveness of these types of flat tummy exercises. If this female abs exercise is too difficult for you, do the next one below.

3. Sit-Back Flat Tummy Exercises - if your female abs muscles are weak and you have trouble lifting yourself off the floor in #2 above, here is an alternate flat tummy exercise for you:

a. Start in a sitting position on the floor with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor (secure your feet under a piece of furniture).
b. Cross your arms over your chest and roll your head and shoulders forward toward your chest.
c. Gently and slowly lean back, keeping your head and shoulders tucked. Continue until you begin to feel your stomach muscles contracting.
d. Then try to lean back just a bit more if you can and hold that position until your muscles start shaking. Try to hold this position with your muscles shaking for five seconds, then ease back to the upright sitting position.
e. Repeat in a few seconds.

4. Reducing Chewing Exercises - yes, as in jaw muscles used for excessive chewing as in overeating. Reducing overeating or exercising those jaw muscles less may be necessary to have great female abs. No one can see your great female abs if they are covered with body fat! Having great female abs may require losing some body fat. Losing body fat means:

a. Cardio exercise on a regular basis - getting the heartbeat up with fun whole-body workouts several times a week.
b. Healthy eating habits - eating healthy foods, eliminating sodas/junk food and taking in fewer calories than you burn each day.
c. Besides flat tummy exercises, strength training for the whole body - any muscle tissue you add will burn extra calories 24/7.

Besides looking great, having great female abs is about good health. Visually and physically, the midsection is the center of the body and the foundation of strength. Weak abdominals leave a woman weaker looking and vulnerable to lower back pain. At first, the goal is to build up the basic strength in the female abs area with flat tummy exercises. And remember, always check with your health care provider before starting any exercise program. Start out slowly and gradually build up your strength and repetitions.

For great abs and good health, the ideal is to reduce body fat down to no lower than 15-20% for women. Sometimes, doing flat tummy exercises is the EASY part, losing excess body fat is the TOUGH part. Eat right, exercise right -- it may take time, just don't give up on your dream of having those great female abs.

Olinda Rola is President of InfoSearch Publishing and webmaster of http://www.safemenopausesolutions.com - a website of physician-recommended natural treatments and articles for a variety of health issues. Visit the website for an excellent free Permanent Weight Loss report you can view online right now.

Learn the Truth About Weight Loss and Getting Great Abs

Debunking The Ab Myth

Ab training has been done to death but it's time to take another look. Why? Because people are still training their abs wrong so all that ab training information must not be doing the job.

1 - No Spot Reducing - Endless crunches will not melt away the fat from your midsection. It just doesn't work that way. And despite the "burn" of high rep ab exercises, you barely burn any calories while doing those endless crunches.

Your fat burning time is best spent elsewhere on more effective training. You also don't work the ab muscle intensely enough to develop it.

So endless high rep crunches fail on both counts - poor muscle building and poor fat burning. Two thumbs down as the cliche goes.

2 - The Abs are a Muscle and should be trained as such. You don't need high reps and lots of sets to work your abs. This just leads to overtraining.

Now, abs are a more endurance oriented muscle so slightly higher reps may be more effective. However, you should keep the reps at 20 or lower and work on increasing the resistance.

Yes, you should be increasing the weights on ab exercises, just like your other exercises. The stronger your abs, the better they will look when the fat is stripped away.

Ever see a really thin guy with a flat stomach but no abs? The abs haven't been trained and aren't developed enough to stand out even when the fat is stripped away.

3 - Don't train the abs - What the heck do I mean by this? Well, your abs get a lot of indirect work from other exercises so you really won't need more than a couple of hard sets of weighted crunches to work your abs.

Your abs are a factor in exercises such as squats, deadlifts, seated or standing presses, dumbbell pullovers, pulldowns, etc. Don't believe me?

Next time you work out, do a few hard sets of standing stiff armed pulldowns on the lat machine and tell me your abs aren't sore the next day. I did them yesterday and my abs are more sore than my back today.

If you want to develop a flat stomach with your abs visible, you need to treat your abs like a muscle and train that way. And you need to strip away the fat with a proper training and nutrition program designed around total fat loss, not trying to spot reduce through endless crunches.

Is there anything out there in the fitness world suffering from more misinformation that how to get abs?

The number of ab machines constantly coming to market is mind boggling. Especially considering that they aren't needed and won't give you the results that you want.

Let's set the record straight on ab training right now and give you the real information you need so you can say no to the next infomercial ab machine and yes to actual abs.

1 - Training your abs consistently will eventually give you the flat stomach or six-pack that you want.

No. It's not gonna happen if your abs are covered by a layer of body fat and doing endless sets of ab exercises is not the way to rid yourself of that excess body fat.

2 - Train your abs everyday for best results.

Again, no. Your abs are a muscle, just like your chest, lats, arms and so on. You should train your abs just like these other muscles, with progressive resistance and high intensity - then allow them to rest and recover. Never train your abs more than 3 days a week.

3 - You need to do hundreds or reps and feel the burn to get great abs.

Yep, again the answer is no. The abs a muscle just like I mentioned above. To get six pack abs you need to strip off the fat, but you also need to build the abs to get them to really pop out.

If the muscle isn't developed, you'll just have a flat stomach but no abs. The name of the game is progressive resistance for sets of 8 - 20 reps, just like your other muscles.

4 - Train the abs with lots of sets and high reps to burn off stomach fat.

You guessed it. This is also false. Spot reduction just isn't going to happen as much as we'd all like it to. You can't burn fat on your stomach by doing endless crunches.

You need to put together a proper weight lifting program, nutrition plan, and cardio in order to rid your stomach of that stubborn layer of fat and bring yout your abs.

Gregg Gillies

Gregg Gillies is a speaker, consultant, fat loss expert, trainer and author. He teaches fitness via his articles, books and courses at his web site http://www.buildleanmuscle.com . He is the author of two books: Complete information on his books, along with lots of free articles are available at his site. And while there, don't forget to sign up for his free newsletter, "Fit Physique".

Burning Fat with the Abs Diet

If you're one of those people who try diet after diet you'll eventually get to thinking you know all there is to know about healthy eating. It doesn't take much to get first hand knowledge of all the main diet concepts and discover the benefits of each one and how it is meant to improve the body. Once you know all the ins and outs of healthy eating I'm sure you presume nothing will take you by surprise anymore. So let me introduce the Abs Diet which is an unusual variation on weight loss through exercise.

The basic concept is this: the body must burn energy to keep the major organs and muscles functioning and healthy. Any muscle mass gain will force the body into using up more energy. So instead of eating less food to reduce weight, the abs diet concentrates on burning up additional energy, much more than would normally be expended. The excess muscle mass absorbs what would have been stored as fat from the food calories eaten and forces the body to burn off any existing fat expending energy.

For every pound of muscle you add to your body it will burn up fifty calories per day. So an extra ten pounds of muscle will burn off five hundred calories a day without even trying. This works out at one pound per week. The diet is based on a snowball effect, the more exercise you take, the more muscle you add therefore you lose weight faster which in turn will allow you to exercise harder and even more weight will be lost. It's easy to see how once the snowball starts rolling, how quickly it will turn into an avalanche all by itself.

During the abs diet users are allowed only to eat twelve power foods which are rich in nutrients. These provide all the fibre, vitamins and minerals needed for the body to remain fit and healthy over the six week diet period. The twelve foods are hot oat cereal, peas and beans, almonds, spinach and a few other green vegetables, berries, eggs, wholegrain bread and cereals, lean meat such as turkey, low fat dairy produce, olive oil, peanut butter and protein powder. These and only these should be eaten during the course of the diet.

It may seem a little difficult to stick with this diet for six weeks but the compulsory exercising should make it easier and it won't be long before you notice a big difference. Not only will you lose weight but you will develop a great set of abs and a toned body to show off. You will be shifting some of the fat on your body to muscle, so although it may look like you're not losing weight, the fat will be replacing itself with muscle. However it is likely you will shed up to twelve pounds during the first fortnight on this diet.

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