It would not be an understatement to say there is a worldwide obsession with hot to get a six pack, or flattening the abs. Scarce is the bodybuilding, exercise or beauty magazine without an article on how to exercise the abdominals. Women hate that dreaded pooch belly, and love men with washboard abs. Men believe a girl with great abs has a hot body.
Unfortunately, the fitness world has beaten the crunch to death in efforts on how to get a six pack. Every variation of crunch torture you could ever imagine has been, and continues to be, published, yet our abs are not getting flatter!
Clearly these people don't suffer from lack of exercise, so what could it be?
Quite frankly, it could be any number of several challenges that are part of an overall dysfunction in the abdominal muscles. Because there are so many causes of abdominal dysfunction, I will list the relevant muscles functions. Then, I can share the secrets that will work much better for how to get a six pack.
- Rectus Abdominus
- Internal Obliques
- External Obliques
- Transverse Abdominus (TVA)
Muscle tone come from proper nerve innervation to allow the muscle to contract properly. The contractions is what works the muscle and eventually it causes the burn you feel when you exercise. Each internal organ in our body is also wired to muscles and then muscles to bones. So if your internal organs aren't functioning properly, the external muscles that cover them will also not function properly.
This is one reason why a woman will have a harder time getting her lower abs completely flat. A woman's pelvis is wider and there are more internal organs in the lower ab region which means there is more that could go wrong, causing the muscles to protrude and not be toned. Because the organs are wired to the muscles and the brain can not differentiate between pain in the muscle and pain in the organs with which those muscles share sensory nerves, whenever one tissue is in pain, be it muscles, blood vessels, joints or ligaments, all related tissues behave as though they are in pain. This is critical to understand if you want to get a six pack, because it means what you eat (including all types of drugs) and drink, your bowel habits and the general health of your internal organs has a greater influence over how nice your abdominal wall looks and functions than your exercises do.
Don't Know What To Eat? • Need To Improve Your Overall Health?
You, The Owners Manual - is the way to go to help you understand how your body works inside and out. Don't take our word for it, Check out the following review:
As the subtitle to this book suggests, the main purpose of this manual is to help you live a long, healthy life through educating you about your body and its needs. The first author, Michael Roizen, is the pioneer of the RealAge concept--i.e., the idea that age is better measured by lifestyle factors rather than chronology--and he incorporates much of this concept into the current work. In order to get a baseline sense of how much you already know about your body, the first chapter includes a self-assessment, The Body-Quotient Quiz. This multiple-choice questionnaire offers some surprising answers to questions as diverse as "What is the genetic reason that men typically want more sex than women?" and "What is the main purpose of skin?"
The book proceeds to devote a separate chapter to each of the following areas/systems of the body: the heart; the brain and nervous system; bones, joints, and muscles; the lungs; the digestive system; the sexual and sensory organs; the immune system; hormones; and cancer. Each chapter provides basic educational information, much of which is conveyed in easy-to-read "myth busters" and "factoid" formats. Then, once you have learned all the essential information about that area, the authors present a "Live Younger Action Plan," which is a step-by-step guide to making the lifestyle adjustments that can help you to live a longer, healthier life. Some of these actions involve simply making yourself more aware of your own body--eg, finding out your cholesterol levels--while others involve an actual behavioral change such as modifying what you eat. The final 50 pages of the book provide a simple diet plan based on very general guidelines; for instance, the authors offer recommendations under the categories of "foods to eat daily," "foods to eat weekly," and "foods to avoid." Also in this section is a suggested ten-day menu schedule which includes approximately 40 recipes.
This book contains a wealth of important information about general health and
well-being. However, readers who already have a fundamental understanding of
the factors which contribute to a healthy lifestyle may find this manual to be
too basic. Adding to the book's sometimes primitive presentation are the illustrations,
which, while clear and helpful, also border on juvenile in that they include
depictions of strange, elf-like figures. Overall, however, this book imparts
a great deal of vital knowledge in a simple, straight-forward manner, and I would
recommend it to anyone who is looking to learn basic facts about their body's
needs.
Get Abs Now - 3 Easy Exercises
Forget the crunch and side bends, here are three ab exercises, using only very simple equipment, will hit your abs in ways they've never felt before.
Each exercise targets one of the three major planes of movement, sagittal, frontal, and transverse. This will give you a true total abdominal workout. To fully develop the core, you MUST work the core musculature in all three major planes. Standard crunches, side bends, and leg raises? They only work one!
Exercise #1 – Inverse Crunches (Sagittal Plane)
The first exercise is going to target the abs in the sagittal plane. The standard crunch works the body in the sagittal plane. It basically divides your body in half, left and right. When you crunch up, you’re moving in the sagittal plane.
The inverse crunch is one of the most powerful "low equipment" exercises you
can do. It takes the weight of your entire lower body and places it directly
on the abdominal's in a crunching movement rather than a leg raise movement.
It’ll have your abs burning on the very first rep!
For this exercise, you will need a pole or a similar solid vertical surface. A door frame or solid table leg will work. I will use a pole as the example. Lie on your back and brace one shoulder against the pole. Grasp the back side of the pole with both hands about 18 inches up and grip it hard.
To get into the start position, raise your legs up off the floor and slightly bend at your knees and hips. Lock them into this position. Your lower back should be flat on the floor at this point or very close to it.
For this exercise, you are going to be doing a movement similar to a crunch but reversed. I'll explain. The major difference with this exercise is that, instead of raising your shoulders up off the ground to bring your rib cage closer to your pelvis (the anatomical description for the way the standard crunch is performed), you're instead going to be locking down your shoulders and bringing your pelvis up towards your rib cage, similar to a leg raise but placing more tension on the entire rectus abdominus wall.
Why is this effective? What weighs more, your shoulder girdle or your entire lower body? THAT is why it's more effective. There is more resistance!
Let's start the movement. Get into the start position mentioned above. Now pull forward and down hard with your arms. Since your upper body is locked down and your lower body isn't, this will raise your entire lower body off the floor . This should not be viewed like a leg raise. Visualize that you're trying to pull the pole down and forward. Since the pole won't move, your lower body comes up. The pivot point for this exercise is your upper back/bottom of rib cage area, not the hips as in a regular leg raise. As you bring the lower body up, exhale.
Bring the legs all the way up as high as you can, squeezing the abs hard . Now lower very slowly, fighting against gravity as it pulls your legs back down. Stop the lowering phase just before your lower back touches the floor. Be sure you don't let your lower back go flat on the floor between reps to keep up the most tension. Reverse the direction by pulling on the pole again and bringing the lower body back up.
This exercise hits the abs from a very different direction and with very different tension. It's something you will most likely never have felt before! Switch which shoulder is braced against the pole on your next set.
Adjusting the Difficulty - The difficulty of this exercise can be adjusted in several ways. You can adjust the difficulty by moving your hands closer down to your shoulders, making the exercise harder. The higher you place your hands on the pole (as long as your elbows aren't straight), the easier the exercise will be as your abs will have greater leverage.
You can also adjust the amount of resistance your abs must work against by changing how much your knees and hips are bent. If you bring your knees up towards your chest, there is not as much resistance further out from the body, and the exercise will be easier (see Figure 5). The straighter your legs and hips, the harder the exercise will be. If you're adventurous, you can even try this exercise with ankle weights on!
Did you try this exercise yet? I bet you are feeling the burn right now if you did. Ready to try the next two great ab exercises to get a six pack? Six Pack Exercises
