Flat Abs

Getting six-pack abs has been one of the most difficult goals for me to achieve. I am not there yet, but I believe i'm slowly (very slowly) getting there. According to my research, there are three things that we must work at in order to get the flat abdomen and definition we regularly see in magazines and television.

1) Get rid of the fat on top of the muscles

This is the fat just under the skin on top of the rectus abdominus and obliques. Most people know this, what some people do not know is that it abdominal exercises do not get rid of the fat on top of your ab muscles. To get rid of this layer of fat you have to get to a single digit body fat percentage. The only way that I know how to do this is trough dieting.

2) Definition

According to some experts including Frank Zane, the only way to get defined abs is to work them out as much as 6 days a week starting with 100 leg raises and 100 crunches. After you can do these two exercises easily, then you need to do them for a month. After a month, you can add more advanced exercises.

3) Flatten your belly

In order to get a truly flat belly you also need to workout a muscle that is beneath the obliques and rectus abdominus. This muscle is called the transversus abdominis muscle. The TVA muscle runs horizontal around your mid-section. The TVA muscle also has the effect of pulling in what would otherwise be a protruding abdomen (hence its nickname, the “corset muscle”). The most well known method of strengthening the TVA is the vacuum exercise.

Transversus abdominis and stomach vacums

High Intensity Training Explained by Drew Baye

Working Out To Failure

I had a really good workout last Friday. It was a great example of how to workout to muscle failure. I have been doing one exercise session per week for the last 8 weeks and increasing the resistance by 5% or more every week. I have increased my strength on the leg press by 49% in just 8 workouts.

I have a trainer help me load the weights in between exercises and time each exercise and repetitions using a chronometer. Last Friday I got a new trainer named Mike because the regular one went on spring break vacation. I told him the usual instructions of how I work out  and we got started.

Leg Press

We started with the planned weight  doing one repetition every 20 seconds for a goal of six repetitions or 2 minutes of exercise. I made sure my legs where always under tension careful not to give them a rest on the positive or negative part of the repetition.

At about 90 seconds, my legs started to get a burning sensation, (this is the point where I would usually quit) there was still strength left so I kept going past the burning sensation trying to keep my pace. While the burning sensation in my legs was still there, I start to feel my legs getting warm like when you get into a hot tub. My arms start to get a tingling sensation, I'm breathing quickly and this does not feel like fun anymore. My heart monitor started sounding an alarm letting me know that my heart rate is now above 170 beats per minute (my maximum hearth rate is 188).

I kept pushing the weights as much as I could until the point where all I was doing was holding the weights and they were not moving at all. At this point I imagined the weights being a rock that is about to crush me if I don't hold it in place. After a few seconds of just holding the weight in place, the weight starts to move backwards (I can't hold it anymore), I wait a few seconds and this is where I rack the weights and finished the exercise.

I tried to stand up right after my exercise, but in between my heavy breathing and not being able to speak, my legs where not able to hold my own body weight and I had to sit down. I took a 30 second rest and I was able to stand up again. I was not able to catch my breath for the next 10 to 15 minutes.

This is one of the best workouts I have had.

Gaining Muscle On A Low-Carb Diet

I was doing some research online about whether is possible to gain muscle while on a low-carb diet and I found this interesting post.

Why We Have An Obesity Epidemic

I made a shorter version of a presentation by Dr. Doug McGuff that explains what happens when we eat and exercise at a cellular level and why we get fat and cannot lose fat. The original video was over an hour long, this shorter version is 20 minutes.

Exercise In One 20 Minute Session Per Week

For the past six weeks I have been doing only one exercise session per week of about 20 minutes long. I think I been getting pretty good results so far. It can be faster than 20 minutes if you get somebody to have the right weights on all the machines.

The Basics

It consists of 5 exercises, one set per exercise, 6 repetitions per set and each repetition should last 20 seconds (10 seconds the first half and 10 seconds the second half to avoid using momentum at all costs)

The Exercises

1. Pull-Down
2. Seated Row
3. Chest Press
4. Overhead Press
5. Leg Press Machine

The goal of this session is to do each repetition very slow (20 seconds) with a weight that if you were to finish the 6 repetitions in 2 minutes and then immediately you tried one more set it would be impossible for you to do. Each exercises is done until your muscles fail to keep carrying the weight. This means beyond the point when it starts to burn and about 5 seconds after you been pushing/pulling the weight and it has not moved an inch.

Here is an example of how a Doug McGuff did all of the exercises listed above in 10 minutes

Notice the following

• The speed at which he pushes and pulls 
• How his breathing increases towards the end of an exercise 
• How quickly he moves from one exercise to the next with almost no rest period
• How he finished all 5 exercises in almost 10 minutes