5 steps to get six packs fast
1. Know what to fuel your body with
Strong muscles require good food to grow them! A healthy, balanced diet is the most important part in molding dominant abs. Actually, it's "80% on diet, to be exact, with only 20% dependent on exercise," Golby says.
It's not just about eating healthy foods, it's also about eating enough of the right foods at the right times throughout the day when your body is in need. To continually boost your metabolism, you should be eating the right amount of calories in "6 small nutritious meals a day," Golby says.
Balancing the main food groups is a start, but it's best practice to prioritize high protein foods and then split the rest of your daily calories into a variety of carbohydrates and healthy fats. If you're more physically active throughout the week, you should be consuming protein every two to three hours a day. It's best to consume leaner proteins like chicken breast and fish, but Golby also says "it's essential to use whey protein supplement after training."
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2. Focus on all of your abdominal muscles
The abdominal muscles are quite complex and there is no one exercise that is going to get you a six-pack. The core is made up of a set of six areas of muscle—hence, the name six-pack—that all come together and also connect the lower and upper body parts. "Getting a six-pack means far more than simply looking shredded," Golby explains, and that means actively working each muscle group to create an overall powerful core.
When exercising the core, doing demanding exercises and overloading the muscles will create strength and stability in the center of the body. To be sure that you're strengthening the entirety of the core, it's helpful to prepare exercises that work any and all of the abdominal muscles that fall under these main categories: The transversus abdominal, external oblique, inter oblique, and rectus abdominis.
Some of the basic exercises that Golby suggests are crunches, planks, side planks, oblique crunches, reverse crunches, and crossover crunches. Continuously doing these core workouts will help build up your core muscles— and when combined with a good diet—can produce visible results. If these are already implemented in your workouts or you're looking for more challenging exercises, try jackknifes or even weighted Russian twists.
3. Sprinkle ab moves into your other workouts
For those who have set workout splits, like leg or arm days, it's recommended to throw in some ab exercises in-between working sets. Try to do a couple of planks or crunches instead of going on your phone or taking an extra-long rest. It's beneficial to continue strengthening the core because you're always using it—even when working out other sections of your body.
Another thing to watch out for is overtraining your body, which can do more harm than good. After a muscle is worked to the max, it needs time to recover so that it can heal and eventually grow bigger.
A common resource people use to organize their dietary eating is by staying in a calorie deficit for a certain period of time. Golby defines a calorie deficit as a lower calorie intake per day compared to what is required of a person's BMR (basal metabolic rate).
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