. Pay close attention and you'll find TONS of useful info that will help
you get lean sexy abs much faster and stop struggling with excess body fat.
Enjoy!
Q: It's great to sit
down and speak with you, Mike. To start off, how about telling our readers a
little bit about yourself and your fitness background.
MG: I've actually been
involved in the fitness industry for about a decade now, as a Certified
Nutrition Specialist and a Certified Personal Trainer. I'm also the founder of
TruthAboutAbs.com and author of the #1 best selling abdominals ebook in the
world currently, The Truth about Six Pack Abs,
with over 250,000 readers in over 155 countries.
I started developing the Truth about Abs
program about 5 years ago based on how much I saw most people struggle with this
topic and the amount of confusion and scams / gimmicks that were out there
regarding abs and belly fat. I just saw that it was time somebody laid out the
TRUTH about what REALLY works to get ripped six pack
abs.
Q: Let's get right down to it. Everyone wants a
flat set of 6-pack abs, yet very few people ever achieve that goal. Why do you
think there's so much confusion on the subject? Is it really all that
complicated of a process?
MG: You know, it's really
NOT that complicated... However, with that said, to get your body fat % low
enough to really see a nice set of abs, it does take a decent amount of
discipline with your food intake as well as a whole new level of intensity with
your workouts than what most people are used to. The thing is, most of my
clients always comment that the style of eating that I recommend is actually
fun, and they feel more energy due to the more natural unprocessed healthy foods they're
eating and more balanced blood sugar and hormone levels in their
body.
The problem is that there's so much
conflicting advice out there these days, it leads the average joe or jane to
over-complicate things and end up totally confused about what's the best way to
train and eat for six pack abs.
Q: You've said before that abdominal exercises such as
crunches and situps are extremely ineffective when it comes to achieving a flat
stomach, and that they can actually make your stomach look WORSE. Can you
elaborate on that?
MG: Sure... First of all, let me make clear that I'm not
saying that you shouldn't do any abs-specific exercises. Rather, my point of
contention is that most people spend WAY too much time focusing all of their
efforts on abs-specific exercises, instead of focusing their efforts on more
effective full body exercises that stimulate a much greater fat-burning and
muscle building hormonal response, burn more calories, stimulate the metabolism
to a higher extent, and also indirectly work the abs to a decent degree
anyway.
Let me give an example of how many people typically waste too much time on
abs-specific exercises...
A lot of times I see the average joe or jane spending about 15-30 minutes of
their total workout just doing tons of pointless repetitions of crunches,
situps, leg raises, or some other "abs pumping" exercise. Many times this comes
out to almost HALF of their entire time working out.
My point here is that this type of excessive abs training is really a waste
of time training a relatively small muscle group such as the abs, when that time
could have been better spent on full body exercises such as squats, deadlifts,
clean & presses, lunges, upper body presses and pulls, dumbbell swings,
snatches, etc, etc. Compared to spending that time doing abs exercises, all of
the above types of exercises will give you magnitudes more results in terms of
hormonal response, metabolism increase, calorie burning, etc... all while
indirectly working the abs to an extent anyway.
After focusing the majority of your workout efforts on those types of more
effective full body exercises, then it's ok to spend about 5-7 minutes directly
training the abs with abs-specific exercises... but the point I'd like to make
is that abs training should only be a small portion of your training program as
a whole, and not the majority of it.
Also, back to the topic of crunches and situps in particular... Once you've
got a decent amount of abdominal training under your belt, crunches tend to be
one of the least effective ab strengthening exercises since they are actually a
fairly low-resistance exercise. An example of a higher resistance abs exercise
would be a hanging leg raise with a proper pelvic curl-up (different than what
you see most people doing in the gyms, where they only raise their knees up).
Q: How often do you recommend an individual train their
abdominals on a weekly basis? Is basic, straightforward training the best
protocol, or are there advanced ab training techniques that will yield better
results?
MG: I usually recommend incorporating abs-specific training
into your routines about twice/week, and 5-7 minutes per workout. Remember
though that you're also getting indirect ab work through most of the full body
exercises that should be comprising the majority of your workout time.
Beyond the typical leg raises, ab bicycles, hip thrusts, ab pikes, crunches,
etc... there are definitely ways that you can take your abs to a new level that
most people don't even think of. For example, some of the best abs exercises
aren't usually viewed as abs exercises at all...
A couple examples that come to mind are front squats, renegade dumbbell rows,
mountain climbers, 1-arm snatches, and others. Front squats are typically viewed
as just a leg exercise, but if you've ever learned to do a proper front squat,
you'll feel a tremendous stabilization tension required in your abs due to the
weight being shifting more to the front of your body compared to the back as in
back squats. If you haven't done front squats in a while, or are just learning
them, I guarantee if you do a few sets of them, your abs will be feeling it big
time the next day!
Renegade rows are another example of an exercise that's typically just viewed
as an upper back exercise. However, while you're rowing a dumbbell up from a
pushup position while stabilizing your body with your other arm, there is an
insane amount of tension and stabilization strength required in your entire
abs/core area. This is another exercise that really surprises people at how much
they feel it in their abs.
Q: The viewpoints on the effectiveness of
cardiovascular exercise seem to be shifting among fitness experts recently, with
some advocating no cardio whatsoever. What is your stance on cardio as it
relates to achieving 6-pack abs?
MG: Well, I know there's a lot of mixed views in the cardio
area, and I'll proudly say that I'm pretty much totally against traditional
cardio in the sense of just doing long duration, steady pace cardio. I feel that
steady pace cardio is a very ineffective way to train and a waste of time in my
opinion that could be better spent on variable intensity (interval) training, or
more high intensity resistance training (weights, bodyweight training, etc). In
general, I feel that anaerobic training gives you more bang for the buck
compared to wasting time with lots of aerobic training.
Let me elaborate a little so I can make my point more clear...
Let's look at a typical cardio workout such as someone going out for a
45-minute steady pace jog, or going on the treadmill or elliptical for a long
duration steady pace workout. While this steady pace workout is going on, you're
only training your heart in one specific heart rate range... basically, you're
keeping approximately the same heart rate throughout the entire workout... as an
example, let's say that your heart rate stays at 125 beats/minute for most of
the workout. In essence, you're only training your heart in a very limited
range.
Now let's take a look at the mother of all interval training workouts...the
highest intensity version of interval training... wind sprints or hill
sprints... During a wind sprint or hill sprint workout (which based on higher
intensity, generally can't last much longer than about 15-20 minutes at the
most, saving you time), you're doing very high intensity "sprint" intervals of
10-20 seconds, followed by "recovery" intervals of walking back to your starting
point for 40-60 seconds.
This type of highly variable training takes your heart rate screaming
probably up to 150 or 160 beats/minute at the end of the sprint intervals, and
then drops down to 100-110 beats/minute during your recovery intervals. This
means that you're training your heart in a much higher range and making it MUCH
stronger compared to traditional steady-pace cardio.
At the same time, the highly variable intensity training actually works your
muscles in a more resistive fashion, stimulating a higher residual metabolic
effect, hence burning more calories in the post-workout period compared with
steady pace cardio.
I could go on with more reasons why I strongly believe that steady pace
cardio is an ineffective method of training, but I'll make this point
instead...
Look at the typical emaciated, sickly-looking body of a dedicated marathoner
who has wasted most of their muscle away with long duration endurance cardio.
Now compare that to the totally ripped, muscular, strong and healthy looking
body of a world class sprinter, wide receiver, or other athlete that does mostly
high intensity sprint work... which would you rather resemble? I rest my case!
Despite the misleading infomercials, the perfectly
chiseled fitness models in the commercials did NOT get their perfect
body and six pack abs by using that “ab contraption”… they got their
perfect body through REAL total body conditioning workouts and REAL
nutrition strategies.
