Essential 6 Pack Ab Training Techniques

These 6 pack abs training techniques will get you ripped faster. With just a few simple changes to your workouts and eating, you'll start looking much hotter. That' simple.

Don't Do Abs!

Don't work your abs?! Yes, this'll actually help you get your abs faster.

See, getting ripped abs doesn't have a lot to do with how big your abdominal muscles are. It hinges more on how little body fat you have.

So skip the work on your abs and spend the bulk of your time planning your diet. A well planned diet to cut fat will do way more for your abs than any amount of crunches or curls.

Get The Right Body Fat Percentage

Like I said before, having ripped abs is all about having a low body fat percentage. That's it.

See, when guys get down below 10% body fat, and ladies get down below 17%, they'll begin to be able to see their abs. That's the long and the short of it.

So if you can't see your abs right now - drop some fat! If you're serious about getting ripped, (1) measure your current body fat percentage and (2) then lose fat and track your progress.

Measure, diet, track yourself, measure, diet, track yourself... It might seem boring, but it's actually the winning formula.

Lift Heavy Stuff

Lift heavy stuff. For most of us, this means weights like barbells and dumbbells. Why? They work!

Barbells and dumbbells will build up your major muscles, which is what you want to do in addition to losing fat. You can cut lots of fat off and you'll look 'ripped', but more muscle will make you look even more ripped.

Also, heavy lifts will work your abs in addition to your big muscle work. Lifts like the standing barbell press not only work to strengthen your arms and shoulders, but also strengthen your abs and all your supporting muscles.

So, lift big and heavy!

Add Some Cardio

Do some cardio to burn off your fat. Not a ton, mind you, but 30 minutes of extra running a few times a week will really help you. And sprinting is great too.

And even just a few days a week is fine. It's just another way to increase the number of calories you're burning.

But...

Don't get carried away with cardio. It is great for burning some extra calories, but if you burn too many calories too quickly, you'll start losing lots of muscle instead of fat.

You can only lose about 1 to 1.5 pounds of weight a week that's fat. Beyond that, about half the weight you lose will be fat, and half will be your valuable and hard-won muscle.

1.5 Pounds of fat a week is fine.

Drink Tea, Coffee, and Water

OK, both tea and coffee contain caffeine, which will not only keep you alert and active, but also help mobilize fatty acids from you fat tissue. Meaning, they'll help you lose fat.

Tea, especially green tea, is great for fat loss for reasons beyond just its caffeine content. It's very intriguing, and you don't need to understand the biochemistry behind how it works- just drink green tea.

So just use these five 6 pack ab training techniques and you'll start getting ripped - fast! They aren't big changes, but together they'll speed up your progress.

If you want 6 pack ab training techniques, check out this info on abdominal muscle anatomy, and learn how you can even get 8 pack abs. I'm Aaron McCloud and I run the website Complete Strength Training.com, and I'm an American College of Sports Medicine certified Personal Trainer. I've been lifting heavy things, trying different diets, and practicing Japanese martial arts for quite a while. There's a lot of info about all different kinds of strength and weight training, and how to get ripped. Check it out!

Copyright: You may freely republish this article, provided the text, author credit, active links, and this copyright notice remain intact.

Original article

Muscle Strength Training

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that muscle strength training is the most important factor for building solid muscle, lose fat, increase endurance and in general promote good health.

Before we start, let us define strength training. It is the exercise method in which we increase or maximize our physical strength. It is divided in two subcategories:

a) Strength Training and Muscle Build

b) Strength Training without Body-weight Increase

Lets us start from the second category. Strength training without body-weight increase is referred to athletes who use strength to accomplish their goals. They increase their strength through their sport activity without adding a remarkable amount of weight to their bodies. For example, bikers, swimmers hikers, footballers etch are exercising to increase their strength, but only as a mean to achieve their goals.

On the other hand, strength in weight lifting and bodybuilding is obtained through mass adding and muscle-building. Strength training in bodybuilding is most of the time a part of an annual periodic schedule.

Another question would be why is strength so important? Here are a few reasons:

1) Increased Endurance

It has been scientifically proven that strength training increases endurance. Better endurance means longer quality workouts, which is what we all aim for.

2) More Muscle

Being stronger means lifting more and lifting more simply means more muscle. Those two factors are closely related. Developing strength inevitably leads to adding more lean muscle.

3) Strength Builds Self-Confidence

When you are physically strong you will also feel mentally strong. Stronger people are much more self-confident and self-discipline and this helps achieving their goals much easier.

4) Losing Fat

I left the best for last. What many people aren't aware of is that working on your strength is the best way to lose fat! It helps increase your metabolism and therefore lose weight easier.

After pinpointing some of the benefits of muscle strength training, let us see how we can build up our strength:

a) Try Reaching your Limits

Give your strength an extra boost by performing one or two reps more than you normally do.

b) More Reps Less Weight

This is the best training method to increase your strength. Keep your rep range at 10 to 12 and the weight load at 70% of your maximum lift.

c) More Speed

Perform the exercises quicker in order to involve more muscle fibers for the movement. More muscle fibers involvement ultimately leads to strength increase.

Muscle strength training is obligatory for any athlete regardless of the sport activity he is into. It is the basic element for any muscle or physique development.

Keep those muscles pumping!

Chris G Pap
Since 1993 involved in bodybuilding and fitness area.Visit the following link for more info about bodybuilding, supplementation, workout routines and nutrition.
http://www.strengthtrainingmuscle.com/

Original article

Functional Strength Training - Try Something New

You may have heard me talk about functional (or practical) strength. Functional strength is used a lot by athletes who want to get rather strong in a particular aspect of their sport. For example I do Judo so I need a good strong grip. To do this I climb a rope, do a lot of Deadlifts and chin ups. These exercises not only strengthen my hands but also strengthen my back, biceps and abs.

In this report I'm going to talk about what functional strength is, what exercises are functional how you can learn more about it.

What is functional strength?
Functional strength is strength that you can use in everyday activities. For example what good is a rugby player who can bench press 200kg but cannot fend off a tackle? Functional strength training is being able to use that 200kg bench press and converting it into being able to fend off a tackle.

Another example of functional strength is a mother holding a baby in her arms for hours on end. You cannot convert this type of movement into a bench press or leg press movement, it is purely functional.

Gymnasts are a perfect example of functional strength. They can hold themselves on the rings and display awesome feats of strength but get them in the gym and they are nowhere near as strong as they look. This is purely because they are using their strength and co-ordination in a way that is practical for their sport and their needs.

What exercises are functional?
There are two types of exercises: Isolation and Compound movements. Isolation exercises work one or maybe two muscles at a time for eg: bicep curls, Pec Flyes, tricep kickbacks etc.

Compound movements are techniques that work between 2 and 6 muscles these are the bench presses, shoulder presses, squats, deadlifts etc.

I classify functional exercises as exercises that work the whole body. Exercises such as deadlifts, deep squats, standing SA shoulder press, carrying sandbags, sledgehammer work, keg lifts, pushing cars, rope climbing, tyre pulling, medicine ball throws, power cleans, power snatch, towel chin-ups etc. All of these exercises work and involve the whole body resulting in a full body conditioning and muscle co-ordination.

So if you want to do something different with your training instead of a boring bodybuilding program full of isolation exercises try doing a full body workout using practical exercises. Exercises and challenges such as:
- Hold onto a 25kg weight plate for 30 minutes without putting it down
- Try pushing a car round a car park for 20 minutes
- Carry a 20kg-boxing bag round the block.
- Attach a rope to a car tyre and pull it along hand over hand or bear crawl with it
- Piggyback a friend up a mountain
- Do 60 reps of body weight power cleans with 10 sec break in between each rep
- Row on a rowing machine superset with box jumps
- Do 30 reps of BW on squats superset with 1000m rowing
- Use kettle bells

Training for functional strength is great fun because you are doing something different besides a bench press and bicep curl. You are using your entire body to lift, pull and push all sorts of things, which requires massive amounts of muscle involvement and co-ordination.
If you participate in any physical activity like being a gardener, mowing lawns, playing rugby, Judo, wrestling etc you will feel the difference in not only strength but conditioning to.

I highly recommend functional strength training to anyone for the simple fact that it's fun, different, targets and uses the whole body - something that everyone needs.

Author: Matt D'Aquino
http://www.workoutsforjudo.com/

Matt D'Aquino is the founder of Beyond Grappling fitness and conditioning. He is a 2008 Beijing Judo Olympian as well as nationally ranked freestyle wrestler and National Champion in Brazilian Jujitsu. Matt has a passion for teaching all forms of grappling and is on the journey to qualify for his 2nd Olympic Games.

To learn more about Matt and his fitness and conditioning training visit http://www.workoutsforjudo.com/

Original article

Increasing Training Intensity: Intermediate Principles

In an early post I spoke about the two most basic ways to increase your training intensity in the gym; increasing your resistance, and increasing the number of repetitions in your sets. Throughout your training you will encounter a number of training plateaus, which are essentially barriers to achieving your goals. In order to keep achieving results and progress in your training you need to know how to break through these plateaus, which incidentally get longer and longer the more advanced your training state. One of the most effective ways to break through these plateaus is by increasing training intensity, which can be done a number of ways.

You should by now be quite experienced with the concepts of altering your training resistance and reps, and so I won't address them directly within this article. Instead I want to talk about varying the duration of your rest between sets. The first change you can make to your workout in order to increase the intensity is to shorten your rest period by around 15%. It is quite common that training programs prescribe a 60 second break between sets. As a start, try cutting that back to just 45 seconds. You should find that the workout on the whole is considerably more intense, and more difficult to sustain the same performance levels. This is of course a natural physiological response, and your body will again adapt over time to accommodate the increased workload. It does this by increasing the muscle strength, commonly by increasing muscle size.

Once you find that your body has adapted to the shorter rest period, you can do a couple of different things. You can of course alter the resistance, the number of reps in a set, the number of sets or progress to supersets. A superset is the term given to performing to sets back to back without a rest period between them. Supersets can target the same muscle group, opposing muscle groups, or different muscle groups altogether!

Probably the most common type of superset is the one that targets the same muscle group. For example, you perform a set of barbell bicep curls followed directly by dumbbell concentration curls without a rest period. This increases the intensity twofold: firstly because of the absence of a rest period, and secondly because the bicep is already in a fatigued state from the first exercise before performing the second exercise. One of the reasons this is so popular is because it has a dramatic effect on increasing muscle size. It has been show that when a muscle has to perform work while in a fatigued state the muscle increases its size more rapidly than without this stimulus.

The next most popular is the opposing muscle group superset. For example, you perform a set of dumbbell bicep curls followed directly by a set of dumbbell triceps extensions. The intensity is increased due to the absence of a rest period, however the emphasis with this kind of superset is to promote symmetry between the muscle groups. This is exceptionally important in order to prevent chronic injuries later on. It is simply not healthy to work the 'beach muscles' such as the biceps and chest while ignoring the triceps and back muscles as you might create an asymmetry and cause a hunch back for example.

The above techniques are based on the principle of altering the rest period between your sets, and in some cases eliminating it altogether. You wouldn't superset every exercise, in the same way that you don't need to reduce the rest period between every set. The aim is to increase the intensity, which you might only need to do in the first half of your workout in order to cause increased intensity through fatigue in the later half.

Alexi has studied and worked in the health and fitness industry for over 10 years and specializes in health, lifestyle and fitness topics. Alexi has a number of websites that provide valuable information on equipment that helps you get the most out of your training sessions. One such site is Harbinger Gloves HQ. Harbinger make a great range of weight lifting gloves and you can get the low down on a variety of Harbinger gloves for men and women before you buy some.

Original article

Five Tips About High Intensity Training

I often see people in the gym working out hard, sweating and reaching the limits of their body endurance. Is this wrong? The answer isn't that simple. High Intensity Training known as HIT or any other variation of training where you aim muscle failure can make the difference in muscle development.

Many great bodybuilders adopted such training methods and achieved to become champions. However, what many of us fail to understand is that there isn't any training method that will bring results if you keep doing it forever. The key to understand the way to build the body of your dreams is to acknowledge two important things about muscles: Firstly, that they adapt to every workout routine and secondly, they need resting or low intensity periods to recover.

High intensity training actually shocks your muscles to trigger muscle growth. If you keep training in that pace for more than eight weeks the development not only ceases, but you might end up with an injury. Here, I give you five tips so that you will get the maximum out of HIT:

1) No More than Eight Weeks
As mentioned above after about eight weeks of working out in full intensity, alter your training routine to something where you consume about 70% of your energy so that you don't leave the gym like a total rack.

2) Take a Vacation
Once or twice a year take a vacation from the gym for two weeks and clear your mind and your body from anything that involves weights, training, bodybuilding, supplements and proper nutrition. I know that many of you will be wondering what in earth, I'm talking about. You won't believe how beneficial this is for your body and your spirit. Everything in life that is being done without a break, no matter how much we love it, can become boring. You shouldn't worry that you will lose muscles. As long as you are back in the gym in two weeks, there is no harm done. Personally, I prefer to take a break from the gym for a week in the summer and one week around Christmas.

3) Single Muscle Groups
It is not always possible for many of you due to lack of time, to work out five times a week, but it has been proven that HIT works best if performed on one muscle group a day. Whenever you reach muscle failure, massive amounts of blood are concentrating around the muscle you are working on triggering its growth and giving this special pump feeling, which sometimes lasts for many hours after your training. If you divide your training in two different muscle groups, it's easy to understand that those effects described above will be reduced.

4) HIT Only when Feeling Fit
Training intensively in a certain day where you are not feeling OK will only have the opposite results than the ones you aim for. It is preferable to do a lighter workout or even stay home.

5) HIT Requires Muscle Recovery Supplements
High Intensity Training puts a lot of pressure in your muscle, the skeletal and endurance system way more than in an average person. Your body needs certain assistance in order to develop muscle.

Muscle recovery supplements like Protein Powders, BCAAs, Glutamine and Creatine are necessary.

Follow these five simple rules and you will witness yourself how effective High Intensity training can be.

Keep those muscles pumping!

Chris G Pap
Since 1993 involved in bodybuilding and fitness area.Visit the following link for more info about bodybuilding, supplementation, workout routines and nutrition.
http://www.strengthtrainingmuscle.com/

Original article

Training Methods for Strength and Muscle Gain

In previous articles, we described various training methods that helped you succeed and reach the targets you have set. The method we will be showing to you in this article is one of my favorites and is guaranteed to make you stronger and bigger in a relatively short time frame. Just a few weeks later you will start noticing some benefits in both strength and mass.

It is a training method called 21 or its alternative variation called 28. The concept is to perform the same exercise in three or four different ways. So, how exactly is this training method being carried out?

Let us say that biceps are scheduled in our today's workout. Starting with the 21 variation of the method, you grab a curl bar and do six regular reps. Continue by doing another six reps only this time you do the motion from the middle and up to the top and you complete the exercise by doing another six from the lowest point up to the middle of the motion range. It is important not to rest between the different moves.

The muscle burn and the feeling of your muscles being on the verge of exploding is unique! You can apply this method to all exercises in every muscle group that you train. Go easy on the weights at the beginning until you have adjusted properly and you have learned the technique. It is also important not to cheat. If you feel that you cannot complete the exercise, then consider reducing the weights or the reps.

The 28 variation of this great strength training method is actually the same as the 21 plus an extra set of reps that are being performed slowly. After completing the six regular reps, continue performing six reps extra slow and then do the upper half and the down half movement. The aim of this extreme training method is to give your muscular system a shock that will trigger the muscle growth procedure. As to the question how long to stick with this program, I would suggest 10 weeks max in order to avoid muscle adaptation.

Do not forget that even the best workout plans need to be combined with proper nutrition, supplementation and recovery time in order to give you 100% percent results. Patience and persistence are also two factors that are necessary while you work hard in the gym.

Keep those muscles pumping!

Chris G Pap
Since 1993 involved in bodybuilding and fitness area. Visit the following link for more info about bodybuilding, supplementation, workout routines and nutrition.
http://www.strengthtrainingmuscle.com/

Original article

How to Get Massive - Are You Training Your Most Powerful Muscle?

When most people think of powerful muscles, they usually think arms or chest. Some even think of think of the hips and back. And while these muscles are certainly powerful, they are no where near as powerful as the most powerful muscle you have. Your mind.

Yes, you read that correctly. Your mind or brain is your most powerful muscle, and if used properly can do more for your gains than you could imagine.

How? Simple.

First and foremost you cannot under any circumstances accept defeat. When you are in the gym training, you must always give it your best. Think about this for a minute. How many people do you know who have the best genetics, maybe better than the professionals, but simply do not train hard enough? Do not worry about genetics-give it your best.

Second, you must truly and honestly believe that you can do it-that you can be massive and gain huge amounts of muscle. Again, think about this, do you really believe it-or are you just giving it lip service. Arnold (no last name necessary) was a master at this, he would set a goal for himself and then he would go out and achieve it.

A TIP

Most people fail because they set massive goals-things that are not really achievable, like dropping thirty pounds in month. Instead of doing this, set realistic goals, like adding pound to your over head press every other week.

Yes, I know this is a very small goal, but again, set your self up for success not failure. Achieve this goal then set another one and another one.

You know what will happen by the end of the year? All of those one pound gains (or whatever amount you choose) will add up to a tremendous amount. And chances are this will be reflected in your physique in a positive way that you can see in the mirror.

Same goes with your diet and eating plan, if you are trying to gain muscular body weight, try to consume just a little more protein every couple of weeks. Be it half a chicken breast or a protein shake. All of these added good calories will show up on your physique in positive way a little bit at a time.

CONCLUSION

Your mind truly is your most power muscle, but only if you use it.

Start right now by setting a small goal and then go out and achieve it! You will see, one small success will lead to another and then another. Then one day, you will look in the mirror and see the results of all those achieved goals.

KEEP GOING

Want to learn how to build muscle faster than ever before? Then visit http://www.howtobuildmuscleguide.com/ to get your FREE Five Secrets Report that exposes muscle building secrets that most bodybuilders will NEVER know, but wish they did.

Original article