The media and movies have put such a huge emphasis on how people look that it has driven many people crazy trying to lose all their belly fat with the best abs workout they can find. The diet industry has become a billion dollar industry with all kinds of useless equipment, special super diet pills, new amazing and discovered diets, and now there is even prescription diet pills approved by the FDA.
How do I know what works? What made me the expert on how to properly do an abs workout? Well, not many trainers have looked at every single detail through a microscope like I have. Aside from spending a lifetime in the gym I have also conducted research studies on all different types of workout methods on myself and those that I have trained and helped over the years.
Not everyone can invest hours of training time in the gym like Olympians and professional athletes do, but you don’t even need to if you are training to have a classic physique and washboard abs. Exercise is very important when it comes to maintaining optimal health and fitness. The side effect from the type of workouts I teach will be that you naturally will develop chiseled and ripped abs without doing endless ab workouts.
What if there was a way to do your workouts in less than an hour, just a few times a week? That would cut down the training time of more than 90% of the people out there, and they would even see better results when it comes to burning fat and seeing their abs! This can all be done with bodyweight exercises and interval training workouts. You don’t even need to go to the gym to do that. This cuts out about every possible reason and excuse not to exercise or workout on a weekly basis since you can simply taylor it to be done at home a few days a week..
Three Days Per Week Abs Workout
You’ll do 5 minutes of bodyweight exercises to warm-up. This is a much more efficient approach than spending 5 minutes walking on a treadmill, which really doesn’t prepare you for anything except more walking on a treadmill and doesn’t prepare your core for an abs workout. Now before you start thinking these workouts are going to be a cakewalk, it’s far from it. These workouts are challenging and force your body to adapt and burn more calories while working more of your muscles and core. You don’t have to stress about what to do for your next abs workout because it is built into these workouts. Do you wish you knew how to do this right from the start, before you ever spent hundreds of hours in the gym?
Strength Training is Key
This is pretty simple to do. By using supersets you’ll be able to do two exercises back to back without really having to take much of a break in between. Typically you will be working opposing muscle groups with these supersets which allows one muscle group to rest while you are training the other. The benefit is that your heart rate stays high and you can actually cut your training time in half just with this technique.
Where can you find an abs workout that really targets your muscles with ab exercises that work? Many people have trained wrong their entire lives when it comes to how to train their abs and lose fat but Craig Ballantyne from Turbulence Training has brought on a new era of fat loss with his groundbreaking techniques and innovative thinking. Check out this training advice where he outlines simply the most effective fat loss methods to burn fat off your waistline and get ripped abs.
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com
Abs Workout – is it a waste of time?
Not only is the traditional abs workout a waste of time, but they also slow your fat loss efforts. Each abdominal workout you spend crunching takes time away from more effective fat loss methods – such as interval training workouts.
That’s right, the common man’s (and woman’s) ab workout taken from Shape magazine or Muscle’n'Fitness often hurts their fat loss program more than it helps it.
Remember – I’m in the business of getting you the most fat loss in the least amount of exercise time…so I have little room in my program for traditional ab crunches (with the exception of using basic ab exercises for beginners who need to learn to use their ab muscles after a lifetime of inactivity).
Instead, I focus on exercises that build a 6-pack AND burn a lot of calories at the same time in an abs workout. That’s why I’m a big fan of making EVERY exercise an ab exercise (by bracing the abs in every movement), as well as using total body ab exercises (such as Mountain Climbers, the Spiderman Lunge/Climb, and the Stability Ball Jackknife).
These exercises use far more muscle mass than a traditional crunch. In fact, some of the total body ab exercises are “interval-like” in nature, helping to put more metabolic turbulence on the body, and as you know, that’s what burns calories during AND after the workout.
Now of course you know that you can’t spot reduce the fat on your body – so doing an endless number of crunches not only does little for you in terms of losing fat, it also wastes your time in your quest for a 6-pack by doing this type of abs workout.
Here are a couple of strategies to maximize your workout time when your goal is to get lean, and get down to a low-enough body fat percentage to see your abs in as little workout time as possible:
(If you’ve got 2 hours a day to workout, by all means, do whatever your heart desires…but I don’t think many of us that live in the real world have that kind of time.)
Reduce Ab Training
A) First, simply cut back on your ab training – If your goal is to simply lose fat, gain a little muscle, and just look as good possible, then you can’t spend 30 minutes on abs everyday. You can build your 6-pack by doing less than 30 minutes of ab exercise per week.
I’m convinced that no one (not even a fitness model or pro bodybuilder) needs more than 30 minutes of ab training per week.
In fact, at the photoshoots I supervise for the fitness magazines, I get to talk to a lot of fitness models and what they tell me about their training routines might shock you. Most of them don’t train nearly as frequently as you or I might think.
Instead, they’ve worked hard over the years with the basic lifts to build their body, and now many of them simply use nutrition and maintenance workouts to keep their abs showing.
Total Body Ab Workouts
B) Second, replace your crunches with the total body ab exercises I mentioned earlier. Also, if you have access to a cable machine, you can do weighted ab exercises such as kneeling cable crunches.
Interval Training for Abs
C) And finally, if you are doing intervals for fat loss as I recommend, you can use the following approach to increase the difficulty of your ab and interval training. However, this is an advanced method only. Beginners should stick to the TT guidelines in their manual. During your interval workout, perform an ab exercise during your active recovery period. For example, if you are doing running intervals on a treadmill…
Run for 60 seconds at your work interval speed. Immediately stop the treadmill, get off, and go into a set of 20 Mountain Climbers. Climb back on the treadmill and start it up for your next interval. Repeat for 3-6 intervals.
You can also use basic spinal stabilization “ab exercises” such as the plank, side plank, or advanced plank versions (i.e. plank with your arms on the ball) to train your spinal stabilization while under heavy breathing stress. I learned this technique from Dr. Stuart McGill.
Remember: Always train safe, with good form, and be conservative. Don’t try to be a hero in the gym, but you should safely challenge yourself in each workout. This is the best way to make your abs workout as effective as possible.
I took a good 5 weeks to do this How to Get Ripped Abs Review so that I could give people a comprehensive look at what this belly fat burning programs is like. I’ve been in the fitness industry for 25 years now and have followed many fat loss and weight training programs but I’ll have to say my biggest challenge is sometimes just staying lean once I get there. I enjoy eating pizza and ice cream with my kids just like anybody else but sometimes I go a little too far to the extreme and over the course of a few months can put on quite a bit of fat because the heavy weight training routines that I do don’t burn a lot of fat to keep me lean. I decided to take the next 12 weeks to switch over to a pure conditioning and fat loss workout so that I can see my abs again and feel healthy again.
I’m currently testing out a program called How to Get Ripped Abs by John Alvino. I know how to write my own diets and fat loss programs but sometimes after I write them I start to second guess myself through the program and constantly make changes. I wanted a program that laid it out from start to finish so that I wouldn’t have to think about it. I just wanted to follow the instructions and let the fat burn off.
How to Get Ripped Abs definitely has it all which is why I was attracted to this particular program. The package includes everything you could possibly need leaving nothing to chance. It has a 12 week workout program, custom meal plan based on your lean body weight, recipes, and a comprehensive exercise index detailing each exercise with pictures. This program has everything and I wanted my How to Get Ripped Abs Review to include as much as possible.
How to Get Ripped Abs – the workout plan
The workout program is called Meltdown and is divided into 4 phases each lasting 3 weeks. These are very intensive full body workouts labeled workout A and a workout B that are performed every other day 3 days per week with the alternating 3 days being used for high intensity interval training cardio workouts. This is one of the most effective fat burning workouts I’ve ever seen designed. The reason for this is each exercise is designed to use a maximum amount of your muscles, stabilizing muscles, and your core. One example is the single leg curl on a ball. I thought this looked easy in the book but once I tried it and realized I was stabilizing my entire torso while sliding the ball back I found I couldn’t complete the 12 reps. The book is loaded with these full body intensive exercises that in turn burn fat off faster than any isolation or standard weight lifting exercises ever could.
There is also a good amount of dumbbell work with exercises that work multiple muscles at once. I was exhausted after my first workout and now I know why the workout is called Meltdown. Every muscle in my body was exhausted and I was ready to get some rest. The program also allows you to print out your workouts in a chart format so that you can fill in your weight and reps. I printed my workout and placed it onto a clipboard with a printout of the exercise descriptions just in case I needed to reference back on how to do some of the specific ones that I wasn’t familiar with.
The cardio workouts are focused on the days that you don’t train with weights. They are high intensity and there are several to choose from. The book contains variations of cardio that can be done without equipment which is nice because then I can limit my trips to the gym to only 3 per week.
How to Get Ripped Abs – the nutritional guide
Since everyone is different this program is tailored to your individual body type and lean body weight. Nothing is left to guessing here as there is an individual meal plan for each person designated by calories per day. The meal plan has charts of food making it easy to exchange some foods for others. This isn’t a diet as you won’t be starving yourself at all. This program requires that you eat plenty of food. Anywhere from 5 to 6 meals per day spaced out through the day. There is an emphasis on clean whole foods and when you begin to eat like this you’ll find that you fill up fairly quickly, you’re never tired and you are never hungry. There is a separate book included that gives recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and deserts. Also included is a book for protein shake recipes. The entire nutritional program is very precise for the individual and gives plenty of instructions on what to eat and how much. Food logs are also included that you can fill in as well as a daily menu that makes it easy to follow.
If you are looking for a full package fitness program I really consider How to Get Ripped Abs to be foolproof. Think of it like painting by numbers. If you just follow each day exactly as shown the fat will consistently melt off your body while achieving a very high level of physical condition. I am going to follow the 12 week plan to the letter. I’m going to follow the full 84 days to the letter. Come by and check out my daily progress!
If you want to know how to get ripped abs in 90 days or less you will need to follow a plan. Nobody gets ultra lean on accident. Someone is either genetically already ripped or they have followed a workout plan to get ripped. Here are 3 tips that you will need to burn fat faster so that you have six pack abs in 3 months. This simple outline is a good start if you want to know how to get ripped abs.
Full Body Workouts
One of the first things to learn about how to get ripped abs is what kind of exercises you should do for fat loss workouts. When doing full body multiple joint exercises you will not only burn fat but build muscle at the same time. Using a fast pace with supersets will allow you to get more done in a 30-45 minute workout session which will increase your metabolism allowing for most of the fat burning to occur after your workout.
High Intensity Interval Training
Getting ripped doesn’t have to be about doing hours of endless boring cardio. The second thing you need to do is switch over any long duration cardio that you do to HIIT or (high intensity interval training), short cardio workouts. This is one of the hidden secrets that goes against the norm when losing fat and getting ripped abs. It is hard for anyone to believe that doing less cardio is actually more effective but I am living proof that only 2 to 3 cardio workouts a week at 12 to 18 minutes each can burn fat fast and allow you to live a real life outside of the gym. An example workout would be jumping rope for 30 1 minute followed by a 1 minute of walking. Do this for 8 total sets and you won’t believe how much a simple 16 minute cardio workout will burn fat off and you’ll quickly see this is the quickest way how to get ripped abs.
How to Get Ripped Abs with Food
is another critical key to success if you want to get ripped in 90 days. Each meal should consist of a quality protein with a high fiber vegetable and some healthy fats like fish oil or olive oil. This will create a slow steady stream of energy so that your body has to also draw from its own fat stores. If you eat like this you will be amazed how fast you will burn fat and how quickly you will start to see your abdominals in the mirror.
You can get ripped in 90 days following these simple rules. If you need it drawn out for you in detail I would recommend following either Turbulence Training or How to Get Ripped Abs by John Alvino. Check out my How to Get Ripped Abs Review to learn more about this incredible system.
