Are you one of the thousands of people that are looking for a way to make that 6-pack more noticeable? If you are, you’re not alone. I’ve trained a large variety of people over the years and believe this is one of the most common goals when it comes to exercising. I’m going to reveal three secrets that will help you obtain the goal of visible abs and help you feel stronger along the way.
Insiders Secret #1 – The abdominal muscles are an 8-pack not a 6-pack.
This is the number one misconception among people exercising their abdominal muscles. Your abs are actually a combination of six upper muscles and two lower muscles referred to as the rectus abdominis muscle giving you an 8-pack. The rectus abdominis muscle is innervated by only 1 nerve, meaning that there’s no distinction between the upper and lower abdominal muscles from a neuromuscular perspective.
Contrary to the myth of having to do crunches for your upper abs and leg lifts for your lower abs, there’s no difference in working all eight muscles. This doesn’t mean trainers are trying to deceive you, it simply means when you are doing crunches, leg lifts or sit-ups you are essentially working all eight muscles at the same time. When done properly these exercises train the full length of the rectus abdominis or “8-pack”.
You must use a mixture of abdominal exercises in order to encourage stimulation in the individual muscle fibers. The full range of motion preformed during a good combination of abdominal exercise routines maximizes the power and performance of the targeted muscle group.
Insiders Secret #2 – Your body fat percentage needs to be 10% or below in order to actually see visible abs.
Abdominal exercises alone won’t give you a noticeable 8-pack. If your body fat percentage isn’t below 10% even doing 1,000 crunches a day will make your efforts futile.
In order to lose body fat you must burn as many calories as possible. You can obtain this by doing a workout that consists of using full body movements that make use of a large amount of muscle.
Abdominal muscles themselves have a small metabolic effect because they work a tiny group of muscles. You need to be working full body movements along with your abdominal exercises to burn a large amount of calories. Incorporate exercises such as lunge walks with arm raises, step-ups with biceps, squat presses and burpies into your normal workout routines to quickly burn fat. Although abdominal exercises will make you strong they can’t be seen when hidden behind a layer of fat.
Another way to speed up your metabolic rate is to incorporate high-intensity interval training into your workout. This type of training takes full advantage of calorie burning and will shed body fat quickly. You also need to evaluate your diet to assure that it’s working with you and not against you. Include a high percentage of living foods that alkalize your body for maximum success.
Insider Secret #3 – Trim down your waistline with a couple easy core strengthening exercises.
While your working hard to burn that belly fat and strengthen your abs you can trim down your waistline too. It’s no big secret that it’ll take time to get an 8-pack with a chiseled waistline, but you can help the process move faster by working your trunk stabilizers.
The trunk stabilizers consist of three significant muscle groups that help support your spine and tighten your abs. These are your internal (IO) and external obliques (EO) and your transversus abdominis (TVA) muscles.
Using a 2-step activation called abdominal bracing is the simplest way to train the IO, EO and TVA. Image how you would tighten your stomach muscles if you were about to get punched, this is abdominal bracing. Activating these muscles can be done by putting on a tight pair of jeans, drawing in your belly while tensing your abdominals.
Being a teenage boy back in the day, I would try impressing girls by tightening my abs for that washboard look. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was actually performing abdominal bracing which in turn was defining the washboard look. It’s that easy to do this type of abdominal strengthening that works all three core muscle groups to reduce the waistline. As time goes on and these muscles become stronger they will begin to activate naturally providing a slim, strong and tight abdominal core.
