Fast 6 Abs Blog

Mmmm …. Yes it is a myth to those of you who are lazy bastards.

Okay so that’s a bit harsh but you cannot tell me that you were not excited by the challenge.  Certainly some of us will automatically see it as such (good achievable challenge), and it will get their juices going.

The critics and negative jerks amongst you will definitely say NO  – fast abs is not possible.  They will even bombard us with their 2 cents worth of bad arguments, citing 1000s instances of false references they know nothing about, as proof.

Proof or no proof, I am always keen for a good challenge. But, I also have the sense and experience to know that results in body building can be fast, if done correctly. Seeing it with my own eyes have changed my mindset in many ways.  No amount of ’realistic arguments to the contrary can change my views.

There is a huge difference between being realistic and that of being empowered to take challenges on. Most people who are being realistic tend to sit on their backside and watch the world go by. Certainly in my years in the industry, I have seen many people achieving the impossible. These are ordinary people like you and me.

Fast abs workouts are here to stay. Even I managed to do it several times in my life especially when I was young and vain enough trying to make myself attractive to the other gender.  Did it work? Yep they fell for it …

For those of you who knows me - I am not blessed in any way with good genes.  I am basically a hard gainer. My friends always tend to get results faster than me. Every time. But even I eventually got my fast abs, and got them fast.

Nowadays I prefer the steady 2 - 3 month long workouts. I just don’t get much buzz out of doing it any faster anymore. Besides my wife is always complaining about coming second to my fast abs training.

Maybe in 2010 I will get the itch I need to do a few muscle building challenges like this. Might even seek out a few challenges outside the body building industry.

Give it a shot, do your best and help us kill this myth about fast abs!

Here’s a typical ab workout from a friend of mine.  I can understand why he has opted for this kind of workout since he’s probably one of those people who we refer to as hard gainers.

His ab workout is similar to this routine. Trains 3 alternate days of the week. Every exercise is done to its maximum intensity to failure.  He did 5 exercises, doing one set each until he reached failure.

The exercises he performed are Ball Crunches, Side Bends, Leg Raises (Single & Double), Reverse Crunches and Waist Twists.  He choose to train every other day for 3 days because he probably needed to recover his heavy intense ab workout.

After 2 or 3 weeks, he then switched to low intensity for one whole week before he goes back to his normal intense routine. Because of the intensity he always make sure that he sleeps and eats well.

He trains every other day for example – Mon, Wed and Fridays.  He does light aerobics work on his rest days except Sunday when he performs no working out. 

Since his workouts are very intense he only does them for a few weeks of the year. For the rest of the year he will do the same routine but at medium intensity. Sometimes when he’s busy with work, he finds that he maintains his abs sufficiently with only 2 maximum intensity workouts a week.

What is your ab workout like.  Is it anything close to what he has above?

I often like asking people about the workouts they do and then sit there listening to them intently. 

In most conversations, the topic seems to evolve around naming the best abs exercise. When pressed further, people are not shy to tell us why in their opinion, a particular movement deserves the title of the best abs exercise. 

More likely they pick the exercise either because it either works for them or that it’s easy to do thousand of reps using it, or just that because it works the abs thoroughly according to scientific research. Those are all perfectly valid reasons.

Funnily enough the bulk of those who makes these remarks tend to be your average joes who works out a lot at the local gym and are not professionals. Only a few were actually qualified personal trainers or professional body builders.

Does that mean anything? Probably not. These guys also knows their stuff after all they live and breath iron week in week out. (I have made a point here to ask more professionals if I get a chance later).

So what is your best abs exercise and how do you choose an exercise to be the best exercise in your view?

For me, it’s very hard to go past the crunches as one of the best eventhough it only affects your upper and middle abs.  Most people like crunches because they are so natural to perform and they affect a lot more abdominal muscles than other exercises.  By varying the way you do them – twisting, ball, elevation or angle, you can get your abs exercised pretty thoroughly with crunches.

One of the best abs exercise that I cannot ignore will have to be the V-sit.  And yes my decision is not made because I can do them well.  It is more because, like the crunches, they affect most of your abs muscles and has been proven to stress the deeper muscles that are harder to reach.  It is a more complete exercise that the crunches.

Another one will have to be the reverse crunches because the way it stresses your lower abdominals.  It is not a complete exercise in my opinion but the way it affects your lower abs mainly gives it right to make the lineup.

So what does your typical abs workout looks like? What kind of routines do you us and what kind of exercises are included? Do you design your workout based on the areas you are weak in or do you based it instead on exercises that are your favourite and which you like to perform?

My abs workout keeps changing all the time, like say every 2 or 3 months.  It is a fact that after a few weeks, your body will have become adjusted to the intensity, causing your muscle growth to slow down or become stagnant.

This is also the main reason why body builders cycle their routines. The exercises I tend to use vary but some of them stays the same throughout the year.

For example, I am a huge fan of crunches because of the complete workout your abs will get from them. So while I don’t stop doing crunches, I often vary the way they are performed.  In my abs workout I sometimes I do floor crunches straight, sometimes with twists, and sometimes I do them on the ball.

My abs workout also don’t include a lot of exercises.  At the most I would only be dong about 4 or 5 exercises but I change them around regularly.

Sometimes people just wants to have firm abs and a flat stomach instead of having their abdominals well developed or ripped as some people tend to say.

Now, there is nothing wrong with developing your abdominal muscles so they are well developed and built to the maximum sizes they can possibly be.

Of course this varies from person to person with genes also playing a part, but the thing you have to remember is this. It takes just as much work to make your abs firm as it is to try and develop them so they are much more bigger and ripped.

If getting firm abs is still the goal for you then your training routine will be a little different to an abs muscle building routine. 

For one thing, you should be aiming your training to have low to medium intensity by performing many more sets or reps.  You wouldn’t be using weights to intensify the workout but instead doing normal resistance based training. 

You should also be doing more aerobics to burn off fat and get your muscles exposed and toned.  Someone with smaller abs will look good compared to those who have bigger abs but also have lots of fat hiding their abs.

A typical routine to firm abs will be training 3 days a week for abs, with the main exercises like crunches, waist twists, side bends, leg raises and vsits. For the rest of the week, you will be doing aerobics exercises like skipping, jogging or swimming.