Ab Exercises - The Best Ab Exercises

August 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment

By Vince DelMonte

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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.

About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of Your Six Pack Quest found at http://www.YourSixPackQuest.com

He specializes in helping chubby guys and gals get six pack abs without gimmicks, supplements or dieting.

Posted by slimmingtips101 | Filed Under Truth About Abs 

The Ultimate Hard-Body Exercise

April 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment

by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer

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The Front Squat

As you may have already discovered, the squat is at the top of the heap (along with deadlifts) as one of the most effective overall exercises for stimulating body composition changes (muscle gain and fat loss). This is because exercises like squats and deadlifts use more muscle groups under a heavy load than almost any other weight bearing exercises known to man. Hence, these exercises stimulate the greatest hormonal responses (growth hormone, testosterone, etc.) of all exercises.

In fact, university research studies have even proven that inclusion of squats into a training program increases upper body development, in addition to lower body development, even though upper body specific joint movements are not performed during the squat. Whether your goal is gaining muscle mass, losing body fat, building a strong and functional body, or improving athletic performance, the basic squat and deadlift (and their variations) are the ultimate solution.

If you don’t believe me that squats and deadlifts are THE basis for a lean and powerful body, then go ahead and join all of the other overweight people pumping away mindlessly for hours on boring cardio equipment.

Squats can be done with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, or even just body weight. Squats should only be done with free weights – NEVER with a Smith machine! My ebook, The Truth About Six Pack Abs contains the full story on why machines are so inferior and even potentially DANGEROUS compared to free weights.

The type of squat that people are most familiar with is the barbell back squat where the bar is resting on the trapezius muscles of the upper back. Many professional strength coaches believe that front squats (where the bar rests on the shoulders in front of the head) and overhead squats (where the bar is locked out in a snatch grip overhead throughout the squat) are more functional to athletic performance than back squats with less risk of lower back injury.

I feel that a combination of all three (not necessarily during the same phase of your workouts) will yield the best results for overall muscular development, body fat loss, and athletic performance. Front squats are moderately more difficult than back squats, while overhead squats are considerably more difficult than either back squats or front squats. I’ll cover overhead squats in a future newsletter issue.

If you are only accustomed to performing back squats, it will take you a few sessions to become comfortable with front squats, so start out light. After a couple sessions of practice, you will start to feel the groove and be able to increase the poundage.

To perform front squats:

The front squat recruits the abdominals to a much higher degree for stability due to the more upright position compared with back squats. It is mostly a lower body exercise, but is great for functionally incorporating core strength and stability into the squatting movement. It can also be slightly difficult to learn how to properly rest the bar on your shoulders. There are two ways to rest the bar on the front of the shoulders.

In the first method, you step under the bar and cross your forearms into an “X” position while resting the bar on the dimple that is created by the shoulder muscle near the bone, keeping your elbows up high so that your arms are parallel to the ground. You then hold the bar in place by pressing the thumb side of your fists against the bar for support.

Alternatively, you can hold the bar by placing your palms face up and the bar resting on your fingers against your shoulders. For both methods, your elbows must stay up high to prevent the weight from falling. Your upper arms should stay parallel to the ground throughout the squat. Find out which bar support method is more comfortable for you.

Then, initiate the squat from your hips by sitting back and down keeping the weight on your heels as opposed to the balls of your feet. Squat down to a position where your thighs are approximately parallel to the ground, then press back up to the starting position. Keeping your weight more towards your heels is the key factor in squatting to protect your knees from injury and develop strong injury resistant knee joints.

Keep in mind – squats done correctly actually strengthen the knees; squats done incorrectly can damage the knees. Practice first with an un-weighted bar or a relatively light weight to learn the movement. Most people are surprised how hard this exercise works your abs once you learn the correct form.



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For complete descriptions of over 50 of the most effective full body exercises for stripping away body fat while developing a rock-hard body, download my e-book The Truth About Six Pack Abs

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Posted by slimmingtips101 | Filed Under mikegeary 

Secrets on How to lose belly fat

February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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Crunch after crunch, sit-up after sit-up; the more time you spend in the gym working on those abs, the flatter they’ll get, right? Wrong. Crunches and sit-ups are not the answer when wondering how to lose belly fat. While it’s true that these exercises will tone and tighten the muscles of your stomach, this does sometimes give you a slightly leaner look around the belly simply because you’re more toned, crunches and sit-ups don’t actually cause you to lose fat at the midsection.

Why Crunches Are Not the Answer

To really understand how to lose belly fat, you need to understand how the body actually burns fat in the first place, and it really has nothing to do with resistance training or weight lifting. The body holds fat when you eat more calories than you expend; these excess calories are converted to fat and stored in the body, whether it’s around your stomach or arms or legs or anyplace else. In reality, fat is fat, and the only way to learn how to lose belly fat is to learn how your body burns that excess fat in the first placed.

To reduce these fatty deposits in your body, you need to adjust that balance of calories consumed versus calories burned. This might mean decreasing your calories every day, expending your calories burned by increasing your physical activity, or a combination of both. This is the only solution to the problem of how to lose belly fat. When you begin to expend more calories than you consume, your body burns those stores of fat to compensate. It calls upon those “reserves” of fat to provide the necessary energy, and the fat begins to melt from your body.

How to Lose Belly Fat Versus Other Body Fat

The one problem that many people face when wondering how to lose belly fat is that they are trying to target this specific area for trimming. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing you can do to decide where your body is going to draw those fat reserves from. It might start burning the fat on your arms, legs, butt, face, or anyplace else before it takes fat from your belly. Crunches and sit-ups won’t cause your body to take fat from that area any sooner or any quicker.

However, there is an upside to doing all those crunches and sit-ups when considering how to lose belly fat, and that is that this will make your stomach look more toned once that fat does start melting off. Also, doing resistance training and muscle building of any type will help your metabolism speed up, as people with more muscle mass have a higher metabolism, meaning that they are burning more calories even at rest, then those without. The body needs to work harder to constantly feed those muscles, so it’s burning more calories overall. So don’t discount the idea of doing crunches and sit-ups when learning how to lose belly fat, just don’t expect them to perform miracles either!

If you are ready to discover the Perfect Belly , then its Time to get started, and get you on your way to stripping off that stubborn stomach fat and unleashing your own set of six pack, flat and sexy abs!….

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Posted by slimmingtips101 | Filed Under Truth About Abs