Six Pack Abs - How To Get Them

If you ever happen to turn on the television in the middle
of the night, you'll notice a flood of infomercials selling
the latest in home gym technology: machines that guarantee
you'll have a sexy, slimmer body with washboard abs by
working out for as little as 5 minutes a day.

Sadly, a lot of these machines can be misleading, like those
abdominal gadgets that promise you a six pack in just two
weeks. Contrary to most peoples belief, doing crunches won't
make you slimmer, it will only give you stronger abs. It
doesn't matter what kind of machine you're using, because
those strong abs are buried under those layers of fat, and
the only way to get rid of those are by doing cardiovascular
exercises.

In order to get the look you're after you need to
concentrate on: 1. Have a healthy diet. 2.
Increase your metabolism. 3. Follow proper abdominal
exercises.

No matter what abdominal machine you're using, or how
expensive it is, you won't see any results if you don't
follow the above routine. It's easy to buy into the glitzy
infomercials on TV, especially when you see attractive
models with hard bodies using the products, while promising
you the same kind of success. All you need is a five
minutes.... Walking to the other side of the room is five
minutes, and you're obviously not losing weight from that.

If you really want to get a flat stomach or rock hard
abs, you need to learn about the proper way of losing weight
and building muscle tone.

Here's one tip on how to effectively burn calories: HIIT, or
High Intensity Interval Training. What's that, you say?
It's a combination of high energy sports such as sprinting
or exercise bike sprinting. You do a sustained 30 minutes
of biking or running, alternate it with 2-3 minutes of
jogging or slow pedaling. Do this alternately for 20
minutes.

This type of training, combined with 5-6 small meals a day
every 2.5-3 hours, will effectively burn the calories from
your body. Having a diet rich in protein, complex
carbohydrates, and omega 3 fats, and doing away with less
saturated fats, and you'll be on your way to getting that
perfect washboard abs.

Crunches - Not The Answer For Six Pack Abs

The truth about crunches! We all seek answers to achieving
ripped abs. The truth about crunches is that they are good
for our abdominal muscles, but they will not give you the
ripped abs that you want. To get ripped abs, you need to
work on fat burning exercises that will burn overall fat,
watching what we eat and eliminating stress from our lives.

Doing crunches may be stopping you from getting six pack abs
because it doesn't focus on what needs to be trained.
Crunches strengthen, stabilize and develop the abdominal
area. But to get six pack abs, we need to focus on overall
fat burning.

Overall fat burning exercises are activities that allow us
to train our whole body to increase our metabolism. By
increasing our metabolism, we are better able to burn fat
and utilize the excess belly fat, which results in more
visibility of the abdominal muscles.

Resistance training has been shown to increase metabolic
activity and help the body to consume more body fat.
Increasing lean body mass through resistance training allows
us to utilize more fuel for our muscles.

Watching what we eat is important as well. By eating quality
foods, which are rich in protein, fat, carbohydrates,
vitamins and minerals, we fuel our body to function better.
Instead of eating 3 big meals per day, we can increase our
meals to 5-6 and decrease the meal portions. This will allow
us to maintain our energy and blood sugar levels throughout
the day.

Stress affects our bodies in a way that makes our bodies
react in an emergency mode. When our bodies are in a
stressful situation, Cortisol is released and causes fat to
be stored in the abdominal area.

There are several ways to decrease the amount of stress in
our lives. Activities like deep breathing, tai chi, and
yoga, have ways of calming the body down and help to reduce
stress.

Crunches, in truth, are good for you but to achieve defined
ripped abs, we need to focus on other factors. Activities like
resistance training, watching what we eat and eliminating stress
from our lives, will help us achieve our ripped six-pack abs.