Supplements for Building Good Abs Part Two
Guarana Continued: As Guarana is a stimulant this gives it two properties useful for getting ripped and toned abs. The first of these is that it speeds up the body’s metabolism – its ability to burn fat for energy – which makes Guarana an effective fat burner on its own (that’s nevertheless safer than most). At the same time Guarana can boost energy, increasing the intensity and duration of a workout. It is found in most energy drinks.
Caffeine: Believe it or not, drinking lots of coffee and tea can actually be a good way to burn weight. Caffeine is a stimulant that works in a manner similar to Guarana, speeding up the metabolism and so burning fat. At the same time it can also increase energy to allow for workouts at times that the user would otherwise be tired. However it shouldn’t be directly before a workout as it can place stress on the heart by exciting the circulatory system.
Creatine: Creatine supplies the body with the ability to recycle discarded ADP and AMP to create ATP – the ‘energy currency’ of all life that the muscles use to exert themselves. This then helps the user to get more out of a workout and can increase their ability to use the phosphogen system – providing more explosive energy with less build up of lactic acid.
NO2: NO2 or nitric oxide is a fairly new supplement that many bodybuilders use to increase the flow of blood through the veins. This then provides the muscles with more oxidative energy allowing them to go for longer and exert more power. Additionally this effect creates the feeling of ‘pump’ which many bodybuilders find inspiring.
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Supplements for Building Good Abs Part One
Supplements are a fairly controversial topic, and many who don’t understand how they work find themselves alarmed that their family or friends would consider ‘putting such things into [their] system’. This is a fairly knee jerk reaction however that fails to look at the facts, and many supplements are no different to a lot of the things we eat. That said however, one or two of the more intense supplements may put a slight strain on the system while others might be a complete waste of time and money – especially if the focus is on building abs specifically. Bellow then are a list of supplements with a brief description of how they work and whether they can prove useful for improving your abs.
Protein Shake: Protein shakes consist simply of protein, normally from a substance called ‘whey’ which is a by-product of the cheese making process that comes from cheese. This then supplies the body with amino acids which is what it uses to rebuild the muscle when it suffers microtears (the process by which hypertrophy – muscle growth – occurs). While fairly expensive, protein shake is also invaluable when it comes to increasing muscle mass and can actually taste very good mixed with milk. It’s usefulness depends on the exact targets of the user however, as it is mostly used for building muscle as opposed to toning. As abs alone will be visible at 7% body fat with no training protein shakes are not essential for getting a ‘ripped’ looking mid section.
Guarana: Guarana is an energy supplement that many take in the place of caffeine. It is preferable for many to caffeine due to it acting over a longer period of time and being less prone to causing jitters and damaging sleep cycles. It is a herbal supplement that works for many individuals.
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Sit Up Variations
The sit up is one of the most basic and recognised of all exercises and is the go-to method for building strong abs. Overtime however our bodies can adapt to an exercise to such a point where it becomes almost pointless to continue to use the same movement. This is why bodybuilders use a process called ‘muscle confusion’ to mix and match variations of exercises to ‘keep the muscles guessing’.
Fortunately the humble sit up is an incredibly versatile exercise and can be altered in a variety of ways to change the focus and mix it up. Bellow are a list of variations.
- Use a stick behind the head between the hands. This is an advanced move and users should be careful not to ‘push’ the stick into the back of their head. This way the abs become even more isolated.
- Use punches at the end of a sit up and hit a bag or pad in front of you.
- ‘Twist’ at the end of each sit up bringing your elbows to alternate knees.
- Sit up while on an incline bench to provide more resistance from gravity and to change the angle and so the exact part of the abs used.
- Sit up while holding weights or a medicine ball to your chest to increase the resistance. Again this is a fairly advanced option.
- Hold the sit up at the most difficult position or go more slowly while lowering to engage the slow twitch muscle fibres and improve endurance.
- Alternate between sit ups and crunches.
- Have a friend firmly but gently strike you in the abs every time you lie down – this forces you to tense in the relaxed state to avoid getting winded.
- Combine variations: hold weights while on an incline bench, twist while on an incline bench, punch holding weights etc.
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Showing Off Your Abs
Having great abs is a good feeling, and it’s a sure fire ‘trump card’ that will help you attract the opposite sex or impress mates and rivals. The problem however, is that they’re hidden beneath shirts, t-shirts and jumpers 24 hours a day. By the time anyone sees them, usually the hard work is done and the person has already been sufficiently impressed.
This can be disheartening when you’ve spent a lot of time and effort to make sure your abs are ripped and cut while being strong at the same time (of course strong abs shouldn’t be about vanity but are very good for your health blah blah… you get the picture). However there are several ways you can expose your cut abs to the world and impress that guy or girl working in the office opposite you.
One quick trick is to wear a fairly tight jumper over a shirt or t-shirt. Make sure the shirt or t-shirt isn’t tucked in, then pull the jumper off over your head. This will then drag the t-shirt or shirt up long enough to expose your impressive mid section to the world while you fake looking embarrassed.
Another method is to wear shirts that border on transparent. This way you can just hint at the fact that you’re packing heat underneath by showing off the slight outline. Similarly a particularly tight top that clings to the stomach can have a similar effect.
For women it’s of course possible to get away with crop tops which can allow them to show off their abs all day long, though this is only really appropriate in certain scenarios and weather. The only place it’s acceptable to expose the mid region regardless of gender is at the beach or when swimming. Take some NO2 (nitric oxide) just before you go to rush the blood to your abs and get them looking tight and ripped.
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Secondary Abs Training
Ab training is involved in every movement you perform. When you’re running it uses your abs, when you’re walking it uses your abs, when you’re playing gold it uses your abs, when you’re doing a bench press it uses your abs and when you throw a punch it engages your abs. This is why good strong abs are so important, but it can also be used to our advantage to help make training them a 24 hour affair and to train them all the time in the gym.
Training just one muscle group is incredibly difficult, so much so that doing so requires specifically designed ‘isolation’ exercises. During most exercise however at least two muscle groups will be involved. For example when doing a bench press, the pecs are the focus of the exercise, but the triceps, shoulders, traps and abs will also be involved. These are then referred to as the ‘secondary’ muscle groups when doing that exercise.
As it happens, the abs are secondary muscles in just about every exercise. This means that any exercise, no matter the body part you’re focussing on, will provide training for the abs. For some exercises this is more true than for others and some will involve the abs as secondary muscles in a big way. This is particularly the case with calisthenics exercises, as they often require core stability to balance the body weight. This includes press ups and pull ups, both of which require a lot of involvement from the abs.
This then of course needs to be factored into how you train your abs. If you’re aiming to give your abs a chance to rest between workouts, then you should follow an abs workout immediately up with a session of pull ups and press ups. At the same time though, if you feel your abs could do with a bit more work that week, you can use exercises that train your stomach in a secondary manner when training other body parts.
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Running Tips and Variations Part Two
A good running playlist or soundtrack can also greatly improve the value of your runs. These should include tracks with inspiring lyrics (such as Survivors Eye of the Tiger or Kanye West’s Stronger) as well as a steady beat that you can use to time your running. Studies have shown however that the most effective play lists of all work by starting off with a slow tempo and then gradually increasing in speed as you run. This way the body gets more and more worked up until you’re running faster than you knew you could. The music should then slow down or peter off towards the end.
Also not to be underestimated is the importance of warming up and cooling down and stretching. This will prevent injury by getting your muscles and tendons used to movement, and will also get your body used to the movements. By cooling down and stretching at the end of the workout you can then also drain lactic acid from the muscles and prevent soreness the next day.
While all these things will improve the effectiveness of your ‘standard’ runs, a host of variations can also be used to give yourself a very different kind of workout. For example, in interval training the athlete sprints for short distances then walks for a bit further. This actually increases the body’s production of growth hormone leading to increased muscle mass and fat burning. At the same time it can provide a more difficult cardio workout and will burn more calories in a shorter space of time. A similar variation ‘fartlek’ (time play) training uses a whole range of different speeds used intermittently.
You can also make running more difficult by increasing the resistance – by running up hill, through sand or in shallow water. This forces the muscles to work harder and uses up more energy (and so calories). Similarly by running where the air is thinner you can force your body to work harder to extract oxygen and so increase you lung capacity and ‘VO2 Max’.
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Running Tips and Variations Part One
Running is one of the surest ways to burn fat and so expose a ripped six pack, so to improve your running technique and get the most out of your exercise is one of the best ways to improve your progress in getting good abs. See how that works?
Running may seem like a fairly simple task to understand, but there are many variations that can get more from your work and many tips and hints that can be observed to help you run faster and longer. First the tips.
Firstly it’s important to invest in a good pair of running shoes, which can help you to run faster and protect your ankles from twisting, your feet from injury and your shins from splints. A really good pair of shoes will be designed specifically for your foot and for the biomechanics of your stride (the exact way in which you run and your technique). Many sports shops offer this service and will tailor make running shoes at affordable prices.
If you suffer from shin splints, bad knees or week ankles then you may find that you still have problems. However this doesn’t mean that you need necessarily give up running. To pad your feet and protect them from damage one obvious technique is to run on grass. Running around a field for example can be just as beneficial as running around town. When running in doors make sure you put at least some incline on the treadmill – if you do not it will put unnecessary strain on your knees and ligaments.
If problems persist, one option that might work is to get specially made insoles such as ‘Springbak Speedsoles’. These slip into your shoe under your normal insoles and are alleged to improve speed and jumping height as well as eliminating splints.
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Quick Diet Fixes
Taking on a whole new diet can be hard work, but in many cases it’s not really necessary. To lose weight doesn’t necessarily need to involve vastly editing what you eat or cutting out whole food groups – in fact either of these things can actually cause damage to your health and do more harm than good. Obviously the first port of call is simple to eat less. But this should also be accompanied by some cutting down in the departments of simple carbs and fats (while not eliminating them entirely as they too serve important roles within the body).
The best way to do this is to make simple and easy changes to your routines that allow you to eat the same things but slightly more healthily. For example, when you make tea or coffee make sure you take the sugar out of your tea. Instantly you’ve cut your calories and your intake of simple carbs – particularly if you drink lots of tea. Don’t substitute it for sweeteners either (you’re sweet enough already) as by drinking plain tea you will be able to subtly alter your cravings by helping to get rid of your sweet tooth.
Other similar changes you can make include: swapping your fizzy drinks for fruit juice; drinking less alcohol and choosing spirits over lager when you do; not spreading butter under jam; using less fat when cooking; choosing leaner cuts of meat; choosing whole grain rice and bread and swapping chocolate bars and cakes for yogurts and cereals. All of these little changes can add up to make quite a big impact on your caloric intake, and can also leave you feeling ‘fresher’ and alter your cravings. This is a bottom up approach to altering your diet on a larger scale and is one of the most effective methods to lose weight.
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How to Perform Leg Raises Part Two
This above exercise is a good one as it’s easy enough for beginners, but guaranteed to leave even the most hardened bodybuilder with a burning mid section. Still, if it doesn’t provide enough of a challenge there are many ways to make the exercise more difficult.
One such method is to use an incline bench. These benches are slanted at a roughly 45 degree angle from the ground and include handles to hold at the top. The gym goer then uses them by hanging from the handles by their hands, and slowly lowering and straightening their legs in front of them while keeping them as perfectly straight as possible. Again you can make it holder by adding an isometric hold at the end of each set.
If this still isn’t enough of a challenge the obvious way to go one stage further is to do leg raises while entirely vertical. This will require a pull up bar, and from here the user simple hangs by their arms while raising their legs straight up in front of them in a controlled manner. If this is too difficult however, a good in between version that will place less stress on the body as a whole, is to bring the knees up to the chest while hanging rather than keeping the legs straight. This will move the target area to the central layer of abs and also make the workout quicker and easier. These are called frog kicks and are the crunches to hanging leg raises’ sit ups.
Finally, if you really want to show off you can use the leg raises in Rocky 4. Here Stallone uses a flat weights bench, and grabs hold of it with his hands so that he can rest on his shoulders with his legs pointing straight up in the air. From here he then lets them drop down in front of him and then raises them again. In this position it’s possible to perform leg raises through 180 degrees.
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How to Perform Leg Raises Part One
Sit ups and crunches are all very well, but they quickly become boring and this is actually often a large part of what makes people unsuccessful in training up their stomachs – they simply become bored and stop doing it. A workout that feels challenging and is a bit different can be what’s in order then to kick start that abs workout back into gear and to improve progress no end.
Leg raises offer just the thing and target different areas of the abs in a difficult exercise that can be tweaked and tailored to be harder or easier as you progress. Here the idea is that you pivot at the hips still as you would in a sit up, but that it’s your legs that move rather than your upper body. This will train focussing heavily on the top two segments of the abs and will also work the legs while giving you a full body fitness workout.
The easiest and most basic form of leg raise is to lie on the floor flat on your back with your legs flat, then to simply raise and lower the legs. This is fairly easy and needs to be made more difficult by using isometric holds (holding the legs steadily in place, for example hovering just inches above the floor) or by drawing small circles for long periods of time. Do either of these things for a couple of minutes at a time and repeat three times. This is an exercise used in Pilates and is a great beginner’s workout that works well at the end of a session. Practitioners of this movement might to well to hold onto a bar, sofa or anything else behind them while they raise their legs as they may otherwise find it difficult to stay flat to the ground.
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