Fast Abs: What You Need To Do To Get Them
Gimmicks will get you nowhere. The only thing that will get you fast abs is a solid diet plan and good abs workout routine, which I’m going to give you here.
It’s not rocket science. In fact, it’s very simple. Yet, the reason why most people don’t have abs and never will, is they buy into the nonsense that you can get something for free in this world. You know, the ‘abs in just 5 days without lifting a finger’ or whatever, and, I’m afraid it just doesn’t work that way. You get out what you put in, and while it’s definitely possible to get fast abs, you need to accept miracles don’t exist and it will take a little time – but, not much time.
If you are prepared to put a little work and time into it, you’ll reap the results and benefits 99.9% of people will never see. And for a feature as impressive as great abs, it’s well worth it.
Stage 1: Lose fat
The first, and most important thing you need to know is, no amount of abs work will get you that six pack unless you have a very low body fat percentage. You absolutely must make losing fat your priority.
It would be absolutely pointless putting time and effort into doing abs exercises, if you don’t think you’ve got a cat in hells chance of losing almost all of your stomach fat. It has to happen, or the abs will be hidden forever.
Diet
In order to get your body fat down to the level at which abs can be seen, you’ll need to consistently eat less calories per day, and also do some cardio.
First of all, you’ve got to track yourself regularly. This involves weighing in, measuring your stomach fat with callipers, and, counting how many calories you eat on a daily and weekly basis. By having a solid and stable diet in place this can make your task easier, but, it’s not entirely necessary if you are willing to count on-the-fly.
Once you’ve found out how many calories you eat on a daily basis, you need to begin eating less. Do not starve yourself – this puts your body into starvation mode and losing fat will be nigh on impossible. What you need to do is start off by eating maybe 500 calories less per day, and after a week, if you’ve lost weight, then it’s working.
Another tip is to avoid simple carbs such as sugar. Unless they are immediately burned off, they are stored as fat, so avoid, avoid, avoid.
At the point you begin losing weight, this means you are eating below your calorie maintenance level. The maintenance level would be the level at which you eat so many calories to consistently stay the same weight. You need to consistently eat below this, adjusting as the weight goes down.
Cardio
I’m not going to tell you to start jogging around the park, although you could if you want to. I believe cycling – particularly on an exercise bike – is a far more effective, and less strenuous way to lose fat. And rowing, even more so. Anyway: the secret to ultimate fat loss is to know what kind of intensity to do, and for how long.
I would advocate trying to do 30 minutes of cycling, or 15 minutes of rowing, with your heart rate going at around 130-140 BPM, and do this 2-3 times a week with rest days in between.
You should perform all cardio on an empty stomach, because you want to force your body to burn body fat for energy – not food you’ve just eaten.
And the advantage to cardio is, it puts your body in a heightened state of metabolism, which means anything you eat will be metabolised much quicker, so the fat will slip off like never before.
Stage 2: Abs Exercises
If you are serious about abs and going all the way, then there is absolutely no reason why you can’t perform abs exercises whilst you are losing weight. If however you are unsure you can lose the required body fat, it may save you time and effort to simply stick to fat loss first. It’s entirely your choice.
One myth you should be aware of is, working the abs will not burn fat on the abs. Yes, it will help to burn calories, which will indirectly burn the fat, but, the idea that you can perform abs exercises and burn fat in that particular spot just because the muscles in that location are working, is totally wrong – and the reason why most people fail.
Anyway. There are tons of exercises you can use to begin building your abs. But, I’d like to keep it as simple as possible.
I will say you should forget sit ups. Yes, while the abs are involved in sit-ups, much more strain is placed on the lower back. Without doubt, the granddaddy of all abs exercises is…
Crunches
Some people go absolutely berserk with crunches, doing them every single day, hundreds of them. This is ridiculous. Remember: the abs are muscles just like any other; in order to grow they need increasing resistance, nutrients, rest and repair.
When you first start out for the first few weeks, it will be unnecessary to add any resistance other than bodyweight. But in time, if you want your abs to become deeper and more defined, you’ll need to add resistance – I’ll explain this in a moment.
For now, just concentrate on normal crunches. Do 8 – 12 reps and 3 – 5 sets, with a one minute rest in between each.
There are many variations of stomach crunches, but just to get you started, I’ll give you the most basic and common way.
Lie on the floor, hands behind the head, with the feet flat on the floor a few inches out from your butt. Now, keeping the small of your back firmly on the floor, and your feet firmly planted in place, curl your upper body upward and ‘crunch’ your abs. You should hold the contracted position for 2 seconds before slowly lowering. That’s one rep.
After a while, you can begin adding extra resistance to make the abs work harder, and you’ll do this by adding weight. Simply put: you can hold a weight plate on your chest, and as you lift your upper body to crunch, your abs will be forced to work harder, resulting in more gains.
That concludes the basics on getting fast abs. In time, I’ll be adding more advanced methods and will update this article so you can take it to the next level.
