billnad's blog

What does it take to get a 6 pack

Over the years I have seen a lot of flimsy ideas of how to get a set of six pack abs. The most common scams are special machines that will do it and sometimes some kind of drink. I remember at one point Slim Fast seemed to be showing chubby people suddenly spawning a set of six pack abs. Anyway I wanted to put this notion to rest that there is some magic to getting a six pack.

Sure there is some genetics involved in sculpting perfect abs but the two most important factors are diet and exercise.

What? Did you think there was a shortcut?

Six Pack Abs

The diet part is fairly simple; you need to drop any extra fat. You have probably heard this before but there is no such thing as spot reduction when you are losing weight. You will lose weight proportionately, generally, as you lose weight. What you may find is that you have a large stomach and if that is the case of course you will lose that fat faster than you lose the fat on your legs but that is just because that is where the fat deposits will be easiest for your body to use. From: http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/six-pack-abs.html

3 Day Diet

3 Day Diet There has been a diet floating around for many years called the 3 day diet. It is crap and promises a 10 pound weight loss but is in truth a lie. I have thought a bit about this and decided to come up with my own 3 day diet.

Why Use a 3 Day Diet?

Have you ever thought of going on a 3 day diet? I was just surfing around and found that there are people looking for something of a short diet. If you were to do a three day diet I fear that you would not lose a lot of weight but you would have an opportunity to get in better shape by eating better and concentrating on some of those fundamentals of good eating and good metabolism tricks.

Fast Weight Lifting Workout

So I started my workout today with a simple circuit.

To me lately the key to all of my workouts are doing compound exercises, this way I am leveraging different muscles on each set and getting all of my minor muscles groups done. I hate remembering weight amounts but I will give as much detail as I can. Please note that I did this warmup set back to back to back in about 5-10 minutes or so.

Fast Weight Lifting Workout

Bench press  machine  - 12 reps I pushed these out ok and this was mostly warming up the shoulders triceps and chest Military press – machine – 12 reps I find that I have a bit of soreness in my left shoulder but this exercise is a good warmup for triceps and shoulders

Wide Grip Pulldowns - 10 reps I do wide grip pulldowns to get a good stretch and warmup my lats and biceps

Close Grip Rows - 10 reps  Here I am working my lats differently and also stretching out my lower back. I get the weight up higher for this than a traditional warmup because I love the lat burn.

Tricep Pushdowns with rope - 12 reps  This is just an addon to a regular pushdown where the rope allows you to get a better peak contraction. I had a higher weight on this as well. Alternating

Bicep Curls dumbell - 10 reps per arm I was just getting a good contraction for my biceps as the back exercises warm up the biceps but they could still use some work.

Seated Hamstring Curls machine 12 reps I skipped squats today to isolate a bit (maybe I was lazy?) this exercise really hits the hamstrings good and was a good warmup

Leg Press  machine - 12 reps I always love leg press as I can really feel the burn in the quads and the flex in my knees From