Fast 6 Abs Blog

Thanks for visiting. Fast 6 Abs Blog is created to allow us to keep you updated with new developments on our main website – Fast 6 Abs.

We will share with you everything that we know about abdominals and our experiences in the hope that you can learn from us thereby saving you time.  Hopefully you are also able to share with us what you know.

Sharing of relevant, accurate and proven information will always be our primary focus, instead of fancy graphics and killer banners. You may not like it but that’s the format we have chosen.  Readability and simple navigation over fancy formatting.

This blog is also for us  interact easily with you – our users and readers. If there is anything we have covered which you disagree with, or which you still need more information, then you are welcome to share your views with us.

You are also welcome to go to our main website Fast 6 Abs and check it out.  If there is anything you want us to write about which we haven’t yet covered, or write more about, please let us know.

Hope you have enjoyed your visit to our blog like we have enjoyed having you around.

A few months ago, I came up with a simple plan to see how much development my abs would get if I do this simple program for 1 month. If you haven’t read my post yet, you can check it out here One Month Abdominals Trial.

After one month, I noticed that while my strength around my midsection has increased by at least 10 times, my abs are still not showing up because of the layer of fat around them. However, the strength and flexibility gained were probably as good as any other times when my abdominals were well developed.

In terms of toning, I give it ten out of ten. My flabs and loose muscles are no longer there but are now replaced by well toned abs.

In evaluating my new abs strength, I got my 14 year old girl to punch my stomach as hard as she could. Before we started this program, she has managed to hurt the hell out of abs every time we do boxing practice at home. This time though, I could barely feel the power of her punches. While she’s only 14 years old, she’s no sloppy or weak puncher after all the boxing training she’s been doing all this time.

To give you an example of the strength I have gained, I never used to do more than 10 reverse curls because of my weak abdominals and hip flexor muscles. This time around, I can easily do 30 to 40 reverse crunches and in good form. Another example is the number of V-sits I have been able to do now.

While I am very disappointed about the surrounding layer of fat hiding my new developed abdominals, I am not discouraged. The next part of the exercise is of course to incorporate some more aerobics type of training to trim down the fat layers even more. For that, I will probably be doing skipping and jogging in between my abdominals training days.

So what does this exercise program tells me? Many things, one of which is that, you can easily build your abs in one month or less depending on your availability. My abs workout takes only 30mins each training session and anyone can find 30mins out of their day to put into abs training.

Most people when they look at you, forms their impression of your character or personality in the first few seconds. A fit physical appearance is admirable and makes people remember you better. This is not always true in all cases but in most cases, that will certainly be the case.

While the biceps and other muscles stands out more for a person because they are generally exposed body parts, the abdominals don’t get the same exposure. However, when it comes to walking around with your bare midsection, people will not help but admire your well defined sculpted abs.

Some will take your training of this body part as an obsession or an expression of your vanity. What they say wouldn’t matter but, there is a lot more, well formed abs should tell other people about you. So what if you are vain, that’s not the worst thing that can happen besides no one in this world, I am sure, is not vain about one thing or another.

I hope you are training your abdominals for sports fitness or health rather than just to show them off, but that’s entirely up to you. The benefits of having a well toned body and abs are immense. Regardless of your primary reason for doing it, the benefits to your posture, general well being, health, self confidence and self esteem should never be under-estimated.

It is generally accepted, and there are researches which supports this viewpoint, that people with well formed abdominals are considered to be fitter than an average bloke. Whether they are really fit, and we wouldn’t know just by looking at a person’s abs is another story altogether.

People need to be accept the fact that being fat don’t look cool, period. Beer belly and love handles don’t look cool regardless of which angle the camera is pointing from. The only way of looking cool is to burn off the fat layers surrounding your mid section and developing the abdominal muscles that are hiding behind this fat layer.

The next time your so called well intentioned friends take the piss out of you for being obsessed with your abs training, tell them to go get a life. If anything, they should be supporting yuo and/or following you to do something about their pathetic looking abdominals.

GayPharmacist in their comments left on this website, said that you only need to do 30minutes workout every day for one month coupled with some cardio exercises to build your 6 packs. I would like to put that to the test but with several conditions, (1) train every other day and rest in between (2) sleep well and eat well (3) utilise the train-to-failure principle.

The only other changes I will make is that I will be doing back lifts to strengthen my back because you don’t want to get injured. Very important. The other change is that I will be training every other day, but train to failure.

It doesn’t matter how many repetitions you do as long a you don’t get to failure in the first 2 sets. We want those sets to work at warming up your abdominals. The other thing I would like to introduce is to do the exercises slowly. If you can do a full repetition from start to finish within 2 seconds and maintaining tension around the abodominals area in that time, that’s the best way. The last set of course where you train to failure, you just go until you cannot do another repetition. Remember to keep a record of your workouts.

Also, for the whole set, your abdominals should not relax until the end of that set. See my workout below for more details.

This is the 4th of June and my six packs have gone backwards for several months so it’s a good idea to test out their theory and see where I will get to. Anyone else wants to have a go, please feel free and report back your results.

My new workout will look like this :-

3 exercises :-
(1) Crunches (3 sets – with last set to failure)
(2) Reverse Crunches (3 sets with last set to failure)
(3) Back extensions (3 sets)

What I am trying to prove is that you can have only a few exercises lasting about 30mins but if done correctly, can still reap rewards.

Every day I often come across people who complained that no matter what they do, their abs are the hardest to grow. They don’t seem to get the results they are after eventhough they trained very very hard. Other muscles seems to be growing bigger and stronger but not their abdominals.

One look at their abs told me all I needed to know. How can you show your abs if they are covered by layers of fat?

I bet they haven’t heard about the slogan – “abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym”.

Someone was asking me the other day – “how can I grow my abdominal muscles the same way that I am growing my other muscles, and what exercises for abs should I do?”

Pondering on this question for a while, my brief answer to him is – you need to do everything that is required and not just do one thing. Training is one part of the equation but the other parts, and let’s face it – they are all equally important if not critical to your development, is (1) recovery through rest and sleeping and (2) your nutrition program.

Failure to do ALL of those things will make your exercises for abs routine, ineffective.

To which he replied – “but one person in my local gym eats everything he likes to eat and he trains just as hard as me but, he got the results and I don’t”.

To cut the story short – I nearly gave him a cuff around the ears. But, it is still a valid question which we will explore further, in another post. The bottom line of it is, you should never compare yourself and your training to someone else. You are build totally different in your physiology and behaviour. He may well be blessed with good genes but not you.

Copying someone’s training methods is only okay when you are starting out but the level you must always strive for, is to find out what works for you.

No amount of day dreaming will ever help you with your abs training goals, if you don’t know what kind of exercises will work which particular muscles of the abs. I cannot cover all the abs exercises in one post but maybe we can do it over several posts in the next few days.

To start with, the best exercises for abs to me will have to be crunches, reverse crunches, v-sits, leg raises, side bends and twists using a stick.

They are also easy to do and they can all give you better results if you do them using the ball, or an inclined bench, and this is true especially with the crunches.

Crunches on the ball stresses all your abs muscles but especially the upper abs. Crunches on the ball will exercise all your frontal areas including the deeper muscles. They can also affect your intercostals to an extent. Those are the muscles around the sides going up to your back and rib cage.

Reverse crunches train mainly the lower abs and so as leg raises. These are two of the best exercises for abs if done correctly. If you don’t do them right or tend to overextend your movements, then there is a chance the hip flexors and muscles of the hips will be worked, lessening the impact on the lower abs. Reverse crunches is not easy to do but if you master it, it will pay you dividends.

V-sits is best for all around complete abs workout. This is definitely one of the best exercises for abs and it is just a graceful and nice, natural movement to execute. Some people finds the v-sits difficult but that’s okay you don’t have to do 100 reps per set. If you can manage 20 or even 10 per set then that’s also okay. Keep at it and you will be hitting 30, 40 or more in no time.

The last 2 good exercises for abs I want to discuss is the twists and side bends. Side bends according to some people may tend to build too much of your intercostals hence making your waist wider but that’s probably a load of crap. Do more than a few hundreds per set to give your ab muscles a good workout.

There are other good abs exercises which I haven’t covered here so we’ll leave them for next time.