Six Pack Exercises - Are Your Exercises to Get a Six Pack a Waste of Time?

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By John McMills

If I've seen it once, I've seen it a thousand times. Some guy is complaining about how his six pack exercises consist of hundreds of crunches on a regular basis and he's still not getting any results. If you're doing hundreds of crunches, that's why you're not getting any results.

When seeking a six pack, you're looking to build muscle, and high reps do not build muscle! High reps are considered endurance training, which does nothing but convert fast-twitch muscle fibers to slow-twitch. Your six pack exercises need to include low reps with high resistance as muscle is created by overload, and more muscle is created using progressive overload (a term you may be familiar with). Basically, when the body strains to move weight that is towards the upper limit of what it can handle, it decides that it must adapt to be able to move large amounts of weight, which is done by building more muscle (after the initial breakdown). The progressive overload just means that in order to build more muscle, each time you must do more than you had your previous workout.

Six pack exercises are made to work the rectus abdominis, which makes up the muscles of the six pack. If you read at all through the previous paragraphs, you should have a basicidea of the six pack exercises you should be doing by now, but I'll spell them out for you anyway. The simplest would be the weighted crunch. Place a weight on your chest and fold your arms over it (or grab it behind your head) and lift your upper torso up, not up and forwards. That is one of the most common mistakes that keeps you from isolating your abs. You can go as high as twenty reps, but I'd recommend no higher. Aim for at least three sets, and if you're doing very low reps, you'll need more than that.

You might ask, "Are those really all the six pack exercises I need?" Well, if you have a solid nutrition plan and a low body fat percentage (or a plan to get one soon), then yes, you can get a six pack with just this. You will have apparent muscular imbalances as your rectus abdominis will be trained and your obliques probably won't be, but the point I'm trying to make it that you needn't overcomplicate your six pack exercises. If you create a demand on your muscles and they have enough fuel and rest to grow, they will. I wish you the best of luck in your six pack quest.

If you're looking for more free, quality information on six pack exercises or are you ready to get a complete, step by step guide for your six pack exercises, visit our site dedicated to getting you ripped.

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