11 Fun Facts About Your Six Pack

With beach season firmly and completely upon us, it is time to show off those beautiful six pack abs.

What’s that? You don’t have your six pack abs poppin’ out through your shirt?

Fret not, mon frere. Your six pack abs are there. For real. For really real. All you gotta do now is bring them to the surface.

Yes, yes, I know — easier said than the done.

It’s tough getting that six pack together. It’s going to take some planning, some shattering of old habits, and some voting-off-the-island of some six pack myths that are floating around there.

But that moment when you run to the beach because you simply cannot wait to rip your shirt off is a rewarding one. And also a moment you may relive by going back to the car, putting your shirt back on, then doing it all over again. Just ‘cause it felt so darned good.

Without further ado, below are 11 fun facts you may or may not have known about your six pack (seriously, you have ‘em, I’m not messing with ya):

1. Getting a Six Pack is Dictated More by Your Diet Than the Number of Crunchies You Are Doing. Doing a thousand sit-ups a day in the gym might make your abdominals feel tighter and harder, but that won’t make them pop through the spare tire around your belly. Priority number one for getting six pack abs is lowering your overall body fat percentage.

2. Spot Reduction is a Myth. There are an endless number of commercials and products out there that claim to be able to hit those “trouble spots.” The reality is that you can’t choose where fat melts off your body. No magic wand. Sorry. Otherwise you would see dudes and dudettes with flabby arms but a ripped stomach. As mentioned above, reducing your overall body fat percentage is what is going to get you that sleek tummy. And truthfully, melting fat from areas like your lower back, thighs, and arms isn’t such a bad thing.

3. Your Best Supplement is Free. This supplement is a necessary part of your diet – mandatory, actually – and not only does this supplement save you money, it keeps you in an optimum state to burn fat. What is this magic beverage? Water. Drink tons of it. The recommended 6-8 glasses is barely enough for a sedentary person, let alone an active one. I will update this post when I finish a future post on detailing precisely how much water you should be crushing, dependent on your fitness goals, age, etc.
Shake your money-maker!

4. Protein in the Morning is Your Money-Maker. A meal with eggs, turkey bacon and black beans will give you a protein-heavy start to your day.
Not only is protein the necessary part of helping those abdominal muscles heal and grow stronger, but a study done by the British Journal of Nutrition (they sound smart) showed that filling up on protein in the AM helped stifle hunger and increased the sensation of being satiated throughout the course of the day.

5. 500 Crunches Per Day is Silly, Goofy Even. Similarly to how you would never do 500 bicep curls to grow your arms, you shouldn’t be doing an endless number of little to no resistance crunches if you want to make that six-pack pop. Instead, perform your crunches with heavy resistance for a far fewer number of reps – in the range of 8-12. Just like as if you were building your other muscles.

6. Go Myotatic, baby. I stumbled across this exercise by way of Tim Ferriss’ book the Four Hour Body and I absolutely love it. It has replaced my weighted crunches and kneeling cable crunches. All you need is a swiss ball – I prefer a bosu ball – but even a bunch of towels on the floor will suffice.
Source: Tim Feriss, 4 Hour Body
Here is Tim himself showing how to do the exercise. Try and do 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps and tell me your abs aren’t screaming bloody murder.
The reason it works so well is that it provokes a full range of motivation from your abs, hitting all of ‘em.

7. Intense Cardio Kicks Long, Boring Cardio in the Nuts. Repeatedly! Doing 30-60+ minutes of cardio sucks. I’ll admit it. It’s depressing watching trainers work with their clients at the gym instructing them to do long, boring-ass stretches of cardio. Not only is this type of cardio prone to making your brain and butt fall asleep, it is also an inefficient way to burn heaps of fat around the midsection. The solution? High intensity interval training.
Personally, I love this stuff. You work your butt off for 15-20 minutes, and your metabolism gets a big kickstart which lasts up to 48 hours, which means that you are still crushing fat long after you leave the gym.

8. Six Pack Abs and Refined Sugars Will Never Add Each Other on Facebook. Or Follow Each Other on Twitter. Well, maybe refined sugars would try to add 6 pack abs, but 6 pack abs would be like, “Hey man, stop creeping on my profile. It’s awkward.” Simple sugars are just as awkward and lame in real life. They get digested far too quickly, giving you a big insulin spike. Insulin spikes sound badass, but what they actually do is tell our body that we have tons of readily available energy and that it should stop burning fat.
Additionally, once the insulin surge fades away, we get that well-known sensation of feeling worn down and tired, which usually pushes towards eating something else jam-packed with sugar. Doesn’t sound so awesome anymore, does it?

9. Six Pack Abs Take Some Realism. Setting the goal of having six pack abs is the fun part. Actually achieving them, on the other hand, is a tough process. There will be days where you don’t want to go to the gym. Where eating your roommate’s leftover Mexican food that has been deep friend in Chinese food is easier than cooking a chicken breast with veggies. But the reward is worth it. Stay patient, and be realistic enough to know that it is not going to happen overnight.

10. Proper Diet is Priority Number 1. Seriously. Sure, I mentioned this before. But it bears worth repeating because it is simply that important. This is where most people fail, and not only because there is a ton of misinformation about how to eat properly, but because you are being blindsided by a fast food industry that spends billions upon billions of dollars to get you to eat their quick meals, “diet” snacks, sugar-laden drinks, and over-sized portions.
Keep your diet as simple as you need be, and run away from anything that says “diet”, “light” or “green” on it.

11. Anyone can get six pack abs. Unless you are of the 0.01% of people who cannot – and let’s be honest, you aren’t – then six pack abs are within your reach. Stick to your diet, and work out consistently, and it is only a matter of time before you get those six pack abs. Promise.
Well that was fun, wasn’t it? What’s the next step? Utterly and completely embrace your six pack by signing up for my Six Pack Secrets e-Course. It’s free, awesome, and full of more information and sarcasm than you can throw a beach ball at.

See ya at the gym,

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