How To Get A 6 Pack
While most people focus on just exercise, the truth is that almost all experts agree that proper nutrition and diet is the best way to ditch the excess flab to show off your lean muscle mass underneath. Learning how to get a 6 pack though might be a bit more tricky.
Almost all the experts have built the abdominals we all desire. How to get a 6 pack is a matter of choosing which method works best for your body configuration and metabolism.
Crunches and diet
Let’s start with the late, great Vince Gironda, aka The Iron Guru. He advocated avoiding sit-ups completely. Vince had a 6 pack of abs like no one else of his era (his was more like an 8 pack!). He trained hundreds of bodybuilding champions and a host of other body-beautiful celebs on how to get a 6 pack, including movie stars and action movie heroes.
For abs, Vince recommended a series of crunching exercises; on the mat, hanging from a pull-up bar, on a bench and using the Roman chair. He also maintained that it was your diet that displayed your abs, not your workout routine. Vince was very controversial, but he was also a very successful trainer.
Work everything
Four-time Mr. Universe winner, Bill Pearl has written what is arguably the very best book on
weight training and bodybuilding ever composed. In his “Keys to the Inner Universe”, Bill has 62 pages on how to get a 6 pack covering more than 240 different exercises and variations of exercises.
Bill Pearl’s abs looked like the Rocky Mountains divided by the Grand Canyon. At the age of 47 he was voted the “best built man in the World” by his contemporaries.
Who is right?
Actually, they both are. Gironda believed in working the abdominals sufficiently and correctly to develop them and then dieting properly to show them off. Pearl believed in building every muscle to its maximum potential and then dieting to get rid of the body fat so they would show well.
Gironda was a smaller man, fit and trim, muscular and lean. Pearl though was different, tall, very muscled and defined, and basically huge in size. Two different approaches for how to get a 6 pack and two different guys, but both saw great results. For the ultimate ab workout, perform the following exercises, three sets of each.
Perform three sets of each of these exercises.
– Roman Chair Sit-Ups – This is a backless chair device that allows you to hook your legs under a rung and then perform sit-ups for abs and back-bends for lower back muscles.
– Incline Board Crunches – A partial sit-up where you raise your head and shoulders while contracting your abs forcefully.
– Supine Crunches -On a bench or mat, elevate your legs with them bent at a 90 degree angle and place your hands behind your head. Crunch your abs while touching your left elbow to right knee and the reverse.
– Dumbbell Side-Bends – Seated or standing and using a single dumbbell, lower the weight at arm’s length and then return to upright. Alternate sides with 20 reps each side. This is also performed with the weight hanging behind your buttocks so you pull the rear obliques.
– Pull-Up Bar Leg Raises – With your hands widely placed on the chinning bar, slowly elevate your legs, bring your knees to your chest. Lower and repeat.
- Parallel Bar Dip Machine Knee-Ups – With your forearms resting on each side of the dip bar, elevate your knees to waist level.
This completes your 6-pack ab workout!
