Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Best Ripped Abs Diet



The best ripped abs diet must include low fat, high fiber, high protein and little or no carbs. You can have the glamorous six pack, it's not really hard to accomplish. But, you must understand, you will have to make sacrifices to get ripped abs. Eating low fat is not very difficult. You just stay away from the inner aisles at the grocery store and stop parking your butt at the fast food joints. Fat is an essential part of every diet, so you will need to find some good supplements. The best kind is Omega 3 fatty acids found in Salmon. You can find these in different quantities at a health food store.

Adding fiber to your diet will help push food and fat through the body quicker. It will move it out instead of storing it, in the body. I always slowly build up to a level of around 40-50 grams. Make sure you do this slowly, it can wreak havoc on your intestines if you jump right up to a high level of fiber. You don't want to spend half your day in the facilities. Start jacking up your protein intake to 1.5 grams to every pound you weigh. You may find it hard to ingest protein at those levels. I suggest finding a supplement in the form of a whey protein powder shake or bar. It makes it easier for people who have busy schedules and do not have time to prepare meals.

You will hate cutting carbs but your ripped abs diet must include it. You should try and cycle your carb intake. I would eat oatmeal in the morning and then a yam or other low glycemic carb for lunch. Do not eat any more carbs during the day or night. I would then play a trick on my body and feed it a bunch of carbs every fourth day. This will fool the body, your metabolism will start to taper. It will think it's starving for carbs and then it will get what it ask for and will feel like it got its fill.

You can eat a clean diet and do all of the above, but there is no substitute for a killer cardio workout. You need to help your ripped abs diet with a brisk cardio workout five times a week. This will help the body remove excess fat. You do not even have to lift weights very often. You should start to see a six pack forming in three weeks and by the sixth week you will have the look you desire. One more tip to help your ripped abs diet. It can be a pain to eat clean every day. I would suggest incorporating a cheat day every couple of weeks. Your body needs it and you will have a healthier state of mind.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

How To Get Washboard Abs That Make Your Girlfriend Shreak!



Imagine hiding your secret workout regime under loose fitting jumpers and coats for a few weeks while you transform your abs. Your partner has no clue why you are distant, but in a month you unveil your work. A neat set of washboard abs, tight ripped and lean. Would she/he be a little surprised?

You bet! A friend of mine did just that. He was an average looking guy with an average soft body, with a typical layer of fat surrounding his abs. He suddenly got inspired by the idea of a surprise set of washboard abs and decided to keep his project top secret for the month he worked out. Boy was his girlfriend surprised. To say she had a positive reaction was an understatement.

The thing I explained to him that really made it fall into place for him was how to approach a tight set of washboards. Most people are very confused and have some strange ideas about how to get washboard abs. The confusion lays in the working of the abs themselves. It is confusing because we want nice ripped abs, so we decide to work them. We are set on the idea that we need to grow them. Let me clarify this once and for all for you.

Washboard abs are a matter of presentation. A set of tight lean abs on a muscular body is the center piece on that body. It is the focal point. The place the eye rests aesthetically speaking. Many people that decide to get a good body want the abs and focus on the abs. The only problem is that if you have a thick layer of fatty skin covering your abs, the size of your mid rift actually GROWS bigger when you work the abs. You are actually achieving the opposite of what you really want. The ab muscles grow, underneath the thick layer of fat covering the abs, adding to the mass of the torso. Making it bigger to look at.

A muscular body is made up of large arms, large shoulders and large pecs. The focal point of the body is always the abs. The reason why the abs are the focal point is aesthetic contrast. The abs look good because they are so SMALL not big. They are tiny compared to the chest and shoulders and that is why they make the whole physique look good.

The abs are a large muscle group that respond very easily when stimulated. Getting the familiar 6 pack bumps is not hard to achieve. You really don't want them TOO developed. What you are after is the V shape. So, large massive shoulders is the key. Reducing your body fat percentage is the answer. Not growing the abdominal muscle group too much.

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Monday, January 7, 2008

Perfects Abs - Three Ab Routines To Show Your Six Pack



Crazy, ripped, hard abs. That's the key to showing an awesome body. If you think that all training is about is making sure your chest is big enough to make your shirt hang out past your stomach then you’re missing the boat. Chiseled abs is awesome abs.

How do you get ripped abs?

It's about diet, cardio and hard ab routines. I'll give you the low down on how to burn in some washboard abs with this killer ab routine and save the diet ramble for another time.

First of all if your not training abs, start. That would be beginner ab routine phase one! Three sets of crunches for 20 reps a set. If that's not a problem then superset each set of crunches with a set of hip roles, followed by a brief 30 second rest to let the burn fizzle a bit.

For hip roles you lie on the ground pushing down with your hands and raise your pelvis off the floor so the tail bone comes right up and squeeze the abs!

Last step in the beginner ab routine is to add in some bridges or "planks" as some "guru's" of fitness have coined them. This is basically a pushup position but you don't rest on your hands, you rest on your forearms and just hold it for 30-60 seconds. Don't let your lower back sag! Keep a slightly inverted c posture like your trying to pull your hips toward your chin.

So here is the ab routine once you are working all exercises together.

Beginner ab routine phase 1:
Crunch x20
Hip roll x20
Bridge for 30-60 seconds
Rest and repeat for 3 circuits or just keep rotating through!

Alright enough of the easy stuff, we're here for some serious abs, killer abs.

Onto Ab Routine 2: The ab killer! I love pet names.

This ab routine will all be done on the decline bench.

The first ab exercise? Decline hip roll/leg raise. Beauty!

Step 1: Put your head where your feet should be

Step 2: grab the bench or the footholds; whichever is more comfortable (not that it will matter in a few minutes)!

Step 3: Stretch out and do a straight-legged leg raises.

Step 4: once at the top of the leg raise turn it into a hip roll so that you point your feet at the ceiling. Hold for a three count and go back down!

Second ab routine exercise:
Incline sit-ups:
Step 1: put your feet in the foot holds (you've turned around!)
Step 2: Lower yourself until you're about a foot short of lying fully back
Step 3: Come back up if you’re still with me!

Third ab routine exercise:
Incline Russian twists (even sounds evil doesn't it?)

Step 1: don't move out of the sit up position. Just grab a medicine ball or a 10- pound weight.

Step 2: straighten fully your arms right to your front and lower yourself to the bottom position of the incline sit up and hold it.

Step 3: Rotate to the right 90 degrees with your arms straight and then back to the left at 90 degrees. That's one rep. You don't come out of the bottom at all! Fun huh?

Here it is ab routine layout:
Leg raise/hip roll x20
Incline sit-ups x20
Russian twists x20 or 40 if you count both sides!

No rest between ab exercises, and only 30-60 seconds rest after completing the tri-set.

Third Ab Routine:
And the grand daddy hardest ab routine ever? For mortals anyway? Because I remember something about homer Simpson and a cannon ball, but I think you need to have access to the applesauce bar for that ab routine to work!

Well let’s call it the "commando cardio ab annihilation" workout. I have to have a fancy name on it or you wouldn't be interested! It involves a pre-stretch, a contraction and a dynamic stabilization (I just made that up, but you get the idea) exercise. Here are the ab routine exercises.

1. Smith machine, Swiss ball hip rolls
2. Partner resisted Swiss ball crunches
3. Swiss ball rollouts
4. Profuse sweating and clutching of the stomach.

Ab routine exercise 1: Smith machine, Swiss ball hip rolls:

1.Set the bar low in the smith machine, just below the top of the Swiss ball.

2. Sit on the ball and roll out so that you have to reach back and grab the bar as you lie on the ball. You should be about 2-3 feet away, stabilizing your self by holding the bar and flexing everything!

3. Using only your abs, stretch your pelvis down as low as it will go and then do a hip roll. Legs straight is the hardest.

Ab routine exercise 2: Partner resisted Swiss ball crunches.

1. It’s a normal Swiss ball ab crunch but your arms are crossed across your chest and your "friend" pushes down on your shoulders to apply resistance. That's it,..ahem.

Ab routine exercise 3: Swiss ball rollouts.

1. Kneel on a pad with legs crossed ball in front of you not on the pad.

2. Your hands are on the ball so it now looks like your praying?

3. Roll the ball out until your straight as a board with your head between your arms and pull it back in.

4. Profuse sweating and clutching of the stomach. This should come naturally.

In an ab routine all together?

Smith machine/Swiss ball hip rolls x20

Partner resisted Swiss ball crunches x20

Swiss ball rolloutsx20

Rest 30-60 seconds after each tri-set circuit or continue right through if you're a freak of nature or slightly "touched". I've never gotten 20 on all ab exercises on all three sets in a continuous circuit, let me know if you do!

I'll have to buckle down!

Ray Burton is a motivational speaker, an ISSA-certified personal trainer, philanthropist, and author of the best selling weight loss book, "Fat To Fit - The Journey” Ray has written hundreds of articles and been featured in Rising Women, The Calgary Sun, and www.Crosstrainer.ca

For info on Ray's book, visit the home page at: http://www.FatToFitBook.com. To get Ray’s FREE weight loss tips newsletter visit his weight loss website.

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

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".

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