There are so many conflicting theories out there about the best way to get six pack abs and flatten your stomach.

First, there is the fitness magazines who tell you to do a dozen different kinds of crunches.

Then there are the fitness equipment manufacturers who tell us we need to use their machines and do endless amounts of cardio.

Then, of course, there are the late night informercials who keep us updated on all the latest gadgets and gimmicks, such as the the Ab Circle Pro and the Cardio Twister.

So, it’s not your fault you still don’t have the lean midsection you desire!

I’m here to help you weed through all the lies and get to the TRUTH.

Here are the three things you need to do to flatten your stomach or reveal 6 pack abs:

1. Stop eating junk.

You will NEVER see your abs or flatten your stomach if you continue to eat foods that promote fat storage and bloating.

If you continuously ingest refined carbohydrates, chemicals, additives, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, and trans fats you will have no chance at a lean mid section no matter how much you exercise, period.

***Start eating more fruits, vegetables, and raw nuts.

Get rid of all the junk in the house and start making your meals consist primarily of fruits, vegetables, and raw nuts. I dare you to see how much energy you have and how much flatter your stomach feels after eating only those three things until noon each day!

It’s amazing!

Of course, there is still some room for other healthy foods as well, such as grass fed beef and eggs, wild caught fish, yogurt, beans, and quinoa. However, still try to eat as many fruits and vegetables during your day as you can.

2. Stop wasting time with light weights and “abs only” training sessions.

First, you have to stop lifting light weights. It isn’t doing you any good and it might just be wasting your time.

Second, stop dedicating workout time to doing isolated muscle exercises, such as crunches, that focus solely on your abs. They are almost useless since you really aren’t burning that much fat while you’re doing them.

Furthermore, crunches can potentially do more harm to your back then good for your core.

***Start doing a total body Metabolic Resistance Training program.

Metabolic resistance training is essentially cardio with weights.

Instead of trotting along on the treadmill, you will be getting an intense aerobic workout while resistance training. It is really the best of both worlds, resistance training and aerobic training, wrapped up into one time-efficient and highly effective package.

While metabolic resistance training, the idea is to lift enough weight for it to be an effort (without hurting yourself, please) and/or increase the amount of work you do altogether (i.e. do more reps within a given time period).

You also want to choose exercises that work your entire body, or several muscle groups at one time.

For example, try doing dead lifts followed by a plank on a stability ball. Or, squats with overhead press followed by renegade rows.

Make sure you move from one exercise to another without a break and you use a weight or number of repetitions that will cause you to really sweat – you must feel like you are giving a huge effort. Your perceived exertion should be about an 8/10.

By the way, don’t think your abs are working hard during these types of exercises?

Think again.

Research shows that core stabilization exercises such as these, where the abs and other core muscles work to stabilize your body by resisting rotation, prove to be much more effective for increasing the strength and endurance of your core.

3. Stop doing long, slow cardio.

The truth about cardio is that it is a total waste of time. You barely burn any calories while you are doing it and when you stop doing the activity you are done burning calories.

There are even studies out there that show that people who chronically participate in long, slow cardio actually gain weight.

And we all know that to flatten our stomach or see our abdominal muscles we need to lose the pooch.

***Start using High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

You MUST start incorporating some form of high intensity interval training (HIIT) into your workout routines.

HIIT has been shown in scientific research studies to scare the fat right off your body!

In fact, you might be familiar with the saying we commonly use in the fitness industry, “there is no such thing as spot reduction” when it comes to losing fat in only one nasty area.

For example, if you wanted to lose fat on your stomach region well, too bad because you would have to settle for losing it wherever your body feels like giving it up.

However, there is a research study that shows that when participants did HIIT they lost way more belly fat then when they performed any other type of activity.

They lost a ton of fat on their stomachs!

Now tell me that isn’t, in and of itself, a compelling reason to give HIIT a shot.

Try alternating higher intensity intervals with recovery intervals on the bike or rowing machine.

Or if you are working out at home, try running stairs, hills, sprints, doing shuttle runs, or doing bodyweight cardio such as burpees or bodweight squats for time.

The bottom line is you must eat better and incorporate HIIT and metabolic resistance training into your workout routines if you want to flatten your stomach or reveal six pack abs.

If you would like a time-efficient, done-for-you, fat loss system incorporating all three of these important fat loss workout components then you may want to grab your copy of Ultimate Home Workouts

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3. The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life

Gaining or losing muscle or fat is something that must be done very gradually. Losing or gaining too much muscle or fat very fast is not healthy as it can, and definitely will, lead to other disorders of the glandular system. So, when one asks how much muscle can you gain in a week? The answer is relative to how much one is willing to risk – and, naturally -  spend!

Weight trainers worth their practice will have you know that gaining muscle is no easy task. There is a lot to take into consideration and this includes, exercise, diet and lifestyle. A person with a sedentary lifestyle will have to take things slowest as compared to someone who leads a very active life. Needless to say, the active individual will most likely gain a lot of muscle in a week compared to the sedentary one – a few months into a rigorous exercise routine.

But coming back to how much muscle weight can you gain in a week, one can never really put a figure to the answer to that question. It all depends on the diet, supplements and exercise put in. Even then it is hard to say.

People commonly mistake ‘weight gain’ with muscle gain. Here it is important to note  that weight can be gained very fast indeed. Just go out there and eat all the junk food that comes passing by and don’t run, but stroll away, slowly, very slowly from any form of exercise and weight gain will take you by surprise by the time you get home. But here we’re talking about muscle gain, pure, simple, dry, shredded MUSCLE gain!

When one first sets out into an exercise routine, and sticks to it, muscle gain begin to form a graph. In the beginning, muscle gain is slowest; then it begins to go up. Muscle begins to grow tremendously fast after about five weeks of regular exercise. Then the growth, or graph, slows down and will ultimately reach a plateau. This plateau region of the graph can and needs to be avoided because muscle gain is at a bare minimum due to  the muscles of the body have gotten used to a certain exercise routine and so they stop responding to the exercise. This is why exercises of the various muscle groups needs to be changed every five to six weeks.

People who set out to gain muscle and are in a hurry to put on some mass constantly complain that they have only gained five to six pounds of muscle in a period of three months of intense training complete with mass gaining supplements et al. Experienced builders and trainers cannot seem to understand why these guys are complaining! Five pounds of muscle gained in three months is something to write home about, but these pros also know that the five pounds is not just muscle but a lot of fat, water, and perhaps some beer thrown in too. The fact of the matter is that there is not a chance in hell one will gain more than 1 pound of pure dry muscle in a week. Now without some help from the chemists – if you know what I mean!

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The goal of most body builders is to have perfect abdominal muscles. Doing simple crunches and sit ups will not give you a six pack, this seems to be a common misconception within the body building world.

Simply doing sit ups will not give you great abdominal muscles. They can actually hurt your back. Doing just crunches will end up giving you bad posture and not affecting your abdominal muscles at all. They will barely scratch the surface. If you are doing 100 repitions of sit ups and crunches per day, you could end up seriously injuring yourself instead of toning your abdominal muscles. Doing this much of these particular exercises will not allow your muscles to heal and rest before you start all over again, therefore leading to potential permanent damage.

There is a little known fact that to build your abdominal muscles, it is actually best to do things that not specifically designed for those particular muscles. The first thing to do is to lose body fat, if you do not reduce the body fat then noone will ever see the six pack, even if you have one!

Once you have lost the actual body fat so that you can actually see your abdominal muscles, it is then the time to do some exercise to get them in shape. There are many exercises that you can do to build abdominal muscles, and they will involve using the back and sometimes the legs as well.

Situps can hurt your back, but do not rule them out. You need to ensure you know how to do situps properly in the first place, and to not do them to the extent that they over stretch your back. You could also lie on the floor, bend your knees, and pull your thighs up into your abdomen. This is the safer option, but will only then work the lower abdominal muscles. You can work the abs when you do chinups. Use an underhanded grip on the bar, bend your knees at a 90 degree angle, and as you pull your chin up above the bar, then pull your thighs up into your abdomen.

All of these exercises will work, but again, they are pretty much pointless if you don’t lose the body fat first. The loss of body fat typically comes from eating a good diet, while doing exercises to burn fat, as opposed to exercises done to build muscle.

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As more and more people seek ways to develop the perfect physique, many are paying particular attention to individual aspects of their bodies. Some are looking for ways to build their chests. Others are concerned with creating the “six pack ab” effect. Many want to know how to build muscles in your arms and legs.

Is there anything special you can do to build muscle mass in those areas? Are there particular techniques that produce better results for those who want to build muscle tone in their extremities?

While there is no “one size fits all” solution to build muscle in your arms and legs, there are a few things that tend to produce optimal results. Let us look at a few things you can do to get your limbs into tip-top condition.

One smart move is to make compound exercises part of your overall plan. These exercises tend to have a full-body impact. That might seem like a strange recommendation when we are specifically talking about arms and legs, but it does make a difference. Compound maneuvers insure that you are continuing to work those areas even when you are primarily focused on other parts of the body.

Of course, targeted lifting also makes a great deal of sense if you want those bulging biceps or muscular thighs. Fortunately, those who are primarily interested in making progress in these areas have a panoply of option available to them. The bulk of machines in the average gym are designed for arm and leg exercises.

Additionally, one should not overlook the role cardiovascular workouts can have in this regard. Arms and legs are often stubborn repositories of fat and frequent cardio work can help to combat that problem. You may need to get that BMI down before securing results by blasting your extremities with heavy-duty lifting works its true magic.

All of the workouts in the world won’t give you the limbs you want if they aren’t accompanied by two other activities–you need to follow a responsible, healthy diet and you need to give your body time to recuperate between workouts. While some people are undoubtedly tired of reading that advice again and again, it comes up repeatedly because it is so essential. You must eat right and you need to give your muscles a chance to rebuild and grow between workouts.

A combination of targeted lifting, cardio work and compound exercise along with a smart diet and a willingness to allow the body to recuperate represents the best way to reach this particular health goal. If you want to know how to build muscles in your legs and arms, that is the optimal method.

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Well, we can all agree upon one thing – every man and every woman would like to have great abs. Irrespective of age, desire to get into bodybuilding workout or any kind of exercise, most of us want to have flat abs.

Many men and women try using bodybuilding workout programs that use ab crunches as an exercise to reduce belly fat. However, ab crunches are not that helpful at all, according to recent studies.

So when it comes to a bodybuilding workout that will enable you to get rid of all the extra belly fat, you need to do a certain amount of exercise that is sufficient for losing the excess fat. You need to go for a bodybuilding periodization that will take care of your body type and then give you a set of exercises that you can do.

When it comes to bodybuilding periodization, things are not the same for male bodybuilding and female bodybuilding. There are different exercises for the both sexes that suit their own body type.

If you are looking for a bodybuilding regime that will help you get the dream abs for yourself, you need to go for a full ab workout. This particular bodybuilding periodization will help you concentrating on losing the excess fat in your abdominal region and make you get the body that you have always dreamt of.

For all you gorgeous women who want to get the perfect abs through female bodybuilding, you can try out the body full workout that makes you lose a lot of excess weight.

For male bodybuilding, the exercise regime is quite different.

You need to take care of the bodybuilding nutrition, get hold of good dietary supplements, do the required amount of exercise and give your body the right amount of rest.

You have to take great care of all the four things mentioned above in order to get a great body. Remember hat only exercise and no proper diet is downright harmful for your body. You need to balance the diet, the exercise and the amount of rest if you want to indulge in male bodybuilding seriously.

Another thing that you must keep in mind is that the actual muscles are formed during the rest period. Thus, rest forms a very crucial part of the bodybuilding regime.

If you are very serious about male bodybuilding, then you can go for the most rigorous but also the most rewarding method, the highly intensive training program. This is a tough nut to crack, but when you actually do it there is nothing like it.

If you choose the highly intensive training for your body, you will need to go through a very tough regime. However, if you are actually able to follow the regime religiously, you will derive great benefits from them.

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If your wanting to get fit in the new year then weight lifting can be the best way to exercise. As weight lifting uses weight resistance, a brilliant cardiovascular exercise program can be reached, muscle tone can be hugely improved, weight loss will happen quicker and your entire skeletal system, your tendons, ligaments and the such like will be much stronger than before.

To begin using weight lifting as a form of exercising, all you really need is a set of weights, either hand held weights (dumbbells) or an actual weight exercise machine that works on a pulley system. It is also thought to be highly effective to have a weight lifting bench in your initial buys.

Using a weight lifting bench will let the body builder to perform certain exercises that they otherwise would be extremely complicated to do effectively. A couple of these exercises that would be better performed on the weight lifting bench would be the barbell curl, leg lift and the bench press.

The bench press would work the chest muscles and this would be beneficial to use with the weight lifting bench. The weight lifter would lie on their back with their upper torso being supported by the bench. The weight they choose to use is then removed from the cradle where it is supported and then they proceed to lower the weights to their chests. The weight can touch the chest, but the weight lifter is unable to leave the weights rested on the chest. Tthe weight lifter begins to lift gthe weights to their full arm extension. You could repeat this process maybe 8-10 times and these are called repetitions. A completed 8 or 10 reps is then called a set and between each set the weights are placed back on the cradle.

Another exercise better performed on the weight lifting bench is what is known as a seated dumbbell curl. This is done by the weight lifter actually sitting on the bench. You would have a dumbell in each hand and you would then start to curl the weights forward and up. Once this has been done you would then start to lower the weights slowly to create a resistance. This will exercise the bicep muscles in both arms. When your sat on the weight lifting bench, it is more beneficial to the arm movement as it is naturally more controlled.

Another exercise that you could do on the weight lifting bench is one to exercise the lower abdomen. You would procedd by lying on your back with your legs stretched so they are level with the floor. Next, you would hold the legs of the bench and keeping your legs totally straight, you would bring them towards the ceiling.

when you are weight lifting with massive amounts of weights it is better to have a spotter, this spotter will help you with the weights, putting them back on the cradle and so forth. This could be beneficial as you know if things get out of hand or become unsafe, you have someone there with you.

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If you ask most bodybuilders one of there main focuses is to build that ever pleasing six pack abs. Going to the gym in 2009, I still see people doing those crunches and situps in hopes to build abdominal muscles fast. Thas is just simply the wrong way to do it.

Simply doing sit ups will not give you great abdominal muscles. They can actually hurt your back. Doing just crunches will end up giving you bad posture and not affecting your abdominal muscles at all. They will barely scratch the surface. If you are doing 100 repitions of sit ups and crunches per day, you could end up seriously injuring yourself instead of toning your abdominal muscles.

Research indicates that doing crunches and situps put a huge strain on the lowerback, so despite your best effort to get beautifully defined abdominal muscles, which is minimal at best with sit ups and crunches, you end up in the end doing more damage to your lowback preventing working out ever again.

A lot of the current research reveals that doing exercises that are not directly targeting your abs may in fact build your abs much faster. Thus focusing your efforts on the most effective fat burning exercise will probably help you more!

Once you have lost the actual body fat so that you can actually see your abdominal muscles, it is then the time to do some exercise to get them in shape. There are many exercises that you can do to build abdominal muscles, and they will involve using the back and sometimes the legs as well.

The main concern with any form of situp is the extra strain and pressure it puts on your lower back, so even though you are trying to increase your abdominal strength you probably are doing more damage to your lower back.

To avoid this strain a great exercise to build those abdominals is to do chin-ups and adding leg lifts to help build the abdominal. This acts as a whole body workout and you are building better function in the body.

Make a commitment to no longer do situps. Find other ways like chin-ups and pushups as a way to build abdominal muscles as a way to build better functionality in the body. Find ways to change your workout to include a more intense body fat reducing workout which will go farther at defining those abs.

Research is pretty clear our old line of thought with sit-ups is over. Those late night abdominal machines actually do more to hurt your lowerback then actually help you build muscle. Do it differently next time you are in the gym.

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This is a question we get often at SecretsToGettingBuff.com. There is a lot of confustion about when and how much to rest while you are working out.

The answer is: It depends on your goals.

If you are training to increase strength, I recommend resting a bit longer – up to two minutes for exercises like squats and heavy dumbbell work. But if you want to burn the most amount of bodyfat and gain lean muscle, I recommend resting for very short periods of time.

“The Iron Guru” Vince Gironda used to recommend leaving your hands on the bar between sets — now THAT is short rest intervals! He would frequently rest only 15-20 seconds between sets.

This is similar to the strategy used in 7 Minute Muscle — very short rest intervals and very intense training. Smart, short, efficient. That’s the way to go.

A good place to start is simply reducing your rest intervals by 10 seconds. No matter what workout you’re using, decrease your rest by 10 seconds between sets. You may not be as strong on the last few sets (if you are training traditionally… if you use 7 Minute Muscle your rest is “built-in” and not an issue.) Over time you will work your way back up to the same amount of sets and reps but done in far less time.

This means more work output, which means more muscle if your nutrition is good.

This is the best way to train most of the time: Limited rest, intense sets, and short workouts.

They are the ones that produce results.

Go here for more information <— Short, effective workouts

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