Rock Hard Abs Do You Have What It Takes

If your abs look good, your whole body looks good. Having Big arms and chest is one thing but having rock hard defined abs is so another.

Everyone knows that nothing turns heads like a defined full set of abs. And hey, chicks love em. What more needs to be said.

Contrary to popular belief, the abs or Rectus Abdominis is really only one muscle. It stretches from the top of your pelvis up to your ribcage. The “six-pack” as it is called is merely sections of this one muscle.

Dispelling the Ab Myths:

The action of any muscle is simply to contract. And as you can’t contract half your bicep or quad, it makes sense that you cannot contract half your abs as well. Therefore the myths about “upper ab” and “lower ab” training are total nonsense. I’m not discounting those training methods but the simple fact is that if you can’t see your lower abs, it just means you’ve got fat covering them, not that you need to work them harder.

Say goodbye to hanging knee-raises, straight-leg raises, and any other type of leg raises for building your abs. They simply don’t work. The primary role of your abs is to stabilize your body. When you raise your leg for example, your hip flexors pull on your spine and arch it forward/downward. Your abs stabilize this action by resisting and essentially keeping your back from breaking. Take note that this is the static action of the abs. It doesn’t build or strengthen. Leg raising exercises only feel like they are effectively working your abs because of the repeated strain and exhaustion of your muscle producing catabolic, lactic acid build up. Search for “lactic acid” at http://www.muscle-body.com for more information.

What Really Works:

What does strengthen your abs is what strengthens any other muscle in your body. Contraction! In this case – Decreasing the distance between your rib cage and your pelvis.

So we come back to the good old sit-up. But there are a few things to keep in mind.

Firstly, forget about the cool all-the-way-up sit-ups you see in the movies. Your abs are fully contracted when your shoulders are about 5 to 6 inches off the ground. So don’t bother trying to impress or outperform someone by touching your elbows to your knees. It does nothing for you. Crunches as they are sometimes called are the way to go.

Secondly, don’t wedge your feet under something to help you get up. You don’t need to do this if you are doing crunches properly anyway. Your legs should be at 90 degrees to each other and your knees at 45 degrees to your waist. If you need to, use something to press your heels back against to stabilize yourself. This way you will use your hamstrings instead of your hip flexors which will keep the focus on your abs.

Thirdly, keep your hands lightly held against the side of your head or crossed on your chest. Don’t clasp them together behind your head or neck. If you do you will be tempted to pull with your hands to get the last few reps out, which will put unnecessary strain on this fragile part of the spine.

Alternative:

Another good exercise for abs is kneeling crunches. You will need special equipment to perform this exercise. This is where you kneel and contract your abs so that your upper body arches forward/downward. You hold a rope attached to a pulley with weights for extra resistance. Most gyms will have a rope attachment to the triceps pull down to perform this exercise. The idea is to lock your arms against your upper body so that you pull down only with your abs and not your arms.

Ab Training Devices:

In 2 words – Forget it.

You don’t need them. Most of them do nothing for you. Building muscle is hard and it hurts. Most of these devices are designed to take the pressure off your body making the exercise seem easy and con you into thinking you are really targeting your muscles. Don’t believe the hype. Ab training is definitely hard work but definitely worth it’s reward.

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Abdominal Exercises For Beginning Bodybuilders

The abdomen contains the muscles that most beginners struggle with because they take a long time to develop and need a low level of body fat to be seen. The abdominal muscle group consists of three main muscles:

1. Rectus abdominis – commonly known as the abs, this is a large flat muscle wall that runs from the lower chest to the pubic bone.

2. Obliquus abdominis – commonly known as the obliques, this muscle runs diagonally along the side of the mid-section from the lower ribcage to the pubic area. The internal obliques lie underneath the external obliques.

3. Transversus abdominis – this is a thin strip of muscle that runs horizontally across the abdomen.

You can target these muscles effectively by performing the following exercises:

1. Crunches – 3 sets of 15-20 reps. This exercise will work the upper abs.

2. Pelvic tilts – 3 sets of 15-20 reps.This exercise will target the lower portion of the abdomen below the navel.

3. Side bends – 3 sets of 15-20 reps. This exercise will work the obliques.

As with all exercises you need to take care in scheduling specific body parts. To begin with you should incorporate your abdominal exercises into a program similar to the one suggested below:

Day 1: Biceps, Back, Abs

Day 2: Hamstrings, Shoulders, Abs

Day 3: Quads, Forearms, Calves

Day 4: Triceps, Chest, Abs

For the first couple of weeks complete one set but then add one set each week to a maximum of three. At the end of three months you will be ready to move on to more intensive intermediate level exercises.

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The Secrets To Building Muscle In Less Than Ten Seconds

An Introduction to Isometrics

In 7 SECONDS you can develop new muscle tissue. That mean in less than 4 hours a year you can develop a whole new body adding anything from 12 – 25 lbs of muscle on to your frame while substantially reducing your body fat.

A statement like that seems unrealistic. Fantastic – a figment of a delusional comic book writer explaining how a superhero became incredibly strong. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. I though the same and I’m approaching it form the cynicism of a seasoned fitness instructor and personal trainer.

There’s just one little, teeny-tiny problem though. It’s possible. More so that that it’s a reality for thousands of people everyday.

And no, they’re not on steroids or drugs or part of military experiment creating super soldiers. They are everyday people like you and me. They hold down 9-5 jobs and don’t have time for exercise between the kids and mortgage payments.

So how are they doing it?

The answer is Isometrics and I’m going to explain what Isometrics is and how you can start doing it as you read the rest of this article. That’s right. By the time you have finished this you will have completed two exercises, the first to trim and tone your waistline the second to tone and firm your chest.

Ready ?

Isometric Abs

1. Sit up tall and straight in your chair.

2. Breathe in deep and suck in your stomach as hard as you can.

3. Now tense your stomach hard as though bracing for a punch – still keeping it sucked in

4. You feel that tightness, a slight quiver in the muscles? Good, that’s the start.

5. Breath out tightly making an SSSSSSSSS sound. You’ll feel your abs getting tighter.

6. As you breathe out crunch your abs really hard rotating your pelvis upwards and your rid cage inwards.

7. Breathe all the way out

8. Relax

How did that feel? If you did it right it should feel great. Yours abs will be warm, worked, feel relaxed and slightly tired. Now do it again and repeat until you’ve finished this article. Your abs will be tighter, firmer and more toned tomorrow morning then they are right now. Diligent practice of this one exercise will tighten and tone your stomach faster than 1,000 sit ups.

Now to give you something entertaining to read as your tighten and tone your stomach here’s the fascinating and scintillating science behind Isometrics.

Iso (meaning the same) and metric (meaning distance) is a method of tensing the muscles without moving the angle of the joint they are connected to. The abs exercise above is an example of this. So is pushing against an immovable object. Try as hard as you can, tense every ounce of muscle fibre against something that can’t move, you’ll feel you’ve done great workout and in many ways you have!

Back in the old school days of physical culture, the Victorian era’s introduction to bodybuilding and strong men Isometrics was all the rage. Skinny weak sickly kids turned to tensing their muscles in a specific way and transformed themselves into well toned living Greek Statues, strong enough to press grown men over their heads with one arm. Their feats of strength astonished the men of the time and women marvelled at their physiques. Okay, they couldn’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, or hold back a locomotive but they could easily walk up walls lift horse over head and in one demonstration lift a platform on top on which ten men were standing.

One such guy was Maxick. Maxick, born Max Sick was a very weak child from birth and was not supposed to live. But he fought on and survived. A young Max once saw a strong man at the circus and determined to be as strong as the Greek Hero Hercules (their equivalent of Superman). So little Max started lifting weights.

Fortunately his parent soon put an end to this – as he was too weak and fragile to take the strain. Still determined Max began to experiment with his body. Tensing his various muscles as hard as could and learning to control each one individually. Soon Max started to get stronger, more muscular.

One day in his teens Max went in to a local gym, too young to join he just watched. Then on invitation from one of the chief physical culturists (an old school name for bodybuilders) tried to lift a weight. Of course they were expecting Max to fail and have a good laugh at his expense. Max out-lifted the strong man.

People were stunned. Max became a local celebrity in his home time, demonstrating feats of unbelievable strength and muscle control. He could make his muscles jump and dance with a simple thought. And lift seemingly impossible weights.

He travelled to England where he developed a reputation as being incredibly strong. It was here he teamed up with fellow strong man Saldo and developed his Isometric Training system called Maxalding. You didn’t lift weights; you did Isometric Exercises where you tensed and relaxed your muscles, just like your abs.

How are they doing by the way? Pretty tired? Okay give it a rest. Instead let’s try this one for the chest.

Isometric Hand Press

1. Stand tall and straight

2. Hold your arms out in front of your chest

3. Make a slight bend at the elbow, creating a triangle from the wrist to the elbows

4. Press your palms together

5. As you do so concentrate on making your chest as tight and hard as possible.

6. After a few seconds you should feel you’re chest and arms shaking all over – this is the muscles tiring as they work really hard – this is Isometrics.

7. Hold this Position for 30 seconds.

8. Slowly release – this is important, after intense contraction your body needs time to unwind.

Now how does that feel. Repeat it ten times as you scroll down.

The Maxalding system was an early whole body Isometric Training system. His students got stunning results, and they weren’t the only ones. Years later, a man named Charles Atlas achieved phenomenal fame as the Worlds Most Perfect Man while promoting an Isometric System he called Dynamic Tension. It’s still around.

However time advances, people on the look out for new fads move on and Isometrics was forgotten until recently. With a new fitness and physical culture renaissance approaching people are turning back to the old methods. And science is discovering some amazing things.

Like it only takes 7 Seconds to stimulate new muscle growth.

That said, there is one small detail – it has to be incredibly intense stimulus. Isometrics just happens to be the most intense exercise in the world and in a little as 7 seconds you can completely exhaust your muscles. The wonderful thing is it doesn’t matter what your current level of fitness is, because the force you generate while doing Isometrics is in direct proportion to your current level. You can’t really go too far. Isometrics is also incredibly safe because it does not require any weights (except at very advance levels) making it ideal for rehabilitation, seniors and everyone else too busy to get to the gym.

If you’ve followed the directions in this article you will have just worked out two of the biggest muscle groups in the body, the chest and the core muscles of abs. In future articles I’ll explain a little more about some of the specific benefits of Isometrics and give you some more exercises, as well as reveal how it blowtorches fat, and strengthen your digestion system, your internal organs and even reverse the again process. For now enjoy, the feeling of a firm toned waist and a lean powerful chest. Practice these two techniques every second day and remember to breath correctly.

If you can’t wait for the next article and need to know how to get in the best shape of your life RIGHT NOW, check out my website – the largest online resource dedicated to Isometric Training

Your Isometric Expert and Personal Trainer,

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Chest Exercises For Beginning Bodybuilders

The chest area is one of the easist muscle groups for beginning bodybuilders to strengthen and develop. It consists of a large muscle (pectoralis major) to either side of the breastbone and a smaller muscle (pectoralis minor) underneath. The pecs are relatively easy to develop in the early stages simply because they can be trained intensively although care needs to be taken to work them from different angles to ensure full development.

For beginners, three safe but effective exercises are recommended:

1. Incline dumbbell press – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. When you feel comfortable with the mechanics involved in this exercise you can move on to using a barbell instead, remembering to maintain proper form.

2. Incline dumbbell flyes – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. Done properly, this exercise is good for inner and outer pecs.

3. Push-ups – 3 sets of 10-15 reps. Keep your body straight from head to knees and lower your body until your arms form right angles. Done properly, the old fashioned push-up still offers benefits to the chest muscles.

As with all exercises you need to take care in scheduling specific body parts. To begin with you should incorporate your chest exercises into a program similar to the one suggested below:

Day 1: Biceps, Back, Abs

Day 2: Hamstrings, Shoulders, Abs

Day 3: Quads, Forearms, Calves

Day 4: Triceps, Chest, Abs

For the first couple of weeks complete one set but then add one set each week to a maximum of three. At the end of three months you will be ready to move on to more intensive intermediate level exercises.

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The Most Common Myths About Abs

Myth #1

Abdominal muscle is different from regular muscle.

Your abdominal muscles are just like every other muscle in your body. The abdominal is different only in location and unlike biceps or quads they don’t rest on a bony surface. So you should train them the same way you would train, say, your biceps or your chest. The basic laws of physiology apply to all your muscles, including your abs. This means that you have to do exercises in the correct plane of movement to effectively work the muscle.

Myth #2

You have to train your abs everyday.

The rules of weight training state that you should give your muscles at least, a day of rest to recover and this applies to your abs as well. Instead of working your back everyday, do them every other day or even just three times a week. They need a break just like the rest of your body. The trick is to train them hard.

Myth #3

Doing ab exercises gets rid of abdominal fat.

There is no such thing as spot reduction. People assume that if you have fat deposits on your abdominal, exercising the muscles underlying the fat will make it go away. But they assume wrong. You can’t get rid of the fat over a muscle by repeatedly exercising that body part. The only way to burn fat from your tummy is through prolonged exercise and a healthy, low calorie diet.

Myth #4

High repetitions are required to make gains.

As you’ve read earlier, abs are just like every other muscle in your body. That means, you should train your abs the same way as the rest of your muscle groups. To make strength gains with your abs, you have to overload your muscles.

Myth #5

Anyone can have a flat stomach.

For many people it’s not physiologically possible to achieve a flat stomach. In most of us the abdominal muscles are designed to be somewhat rounded, not flat. Age, genetics, gender all these factors decide the size, shape and appearance of you belly.

Myth #6

If you have a bad back, training the abs will worsen it.

Training your abs will strengthen you back. The opposing muscles in you body always assist each other. So if you have weak ab muscles, the load of the work falls on the back. So strengthen the abs and your back will become stronger as well.

Don’t waste time by falling victim to six main ab myths. Train intelligently in accordance with scientifically based training techniques and get super abs.

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