Perfect Ab Exercises
Incline Kneeups - Lie on a slant board that's set at a fairly high incline. With your legs extended and a slight bend at your knees, raise your legs up. As they reach the point where they're perpendicular to the floor, roll your hips toward your navel, bringing your knees into your chest. Hold for a two count, and return to the starting position. Tip: Exhale hard as your knees come into your chest to enhance the abdominal contraction.
Ab Bench Crunch - Sit on the Ab Bench with the arch of the bench against your middle back. Grab the rope handles, pull them down onto your chest until the cross-piece behind your head is about one inch from your neck. Anchor your hands on your chest and allow the weight to pull you back into the prestretch position as you lift your rib cage. With a quick twitch, drive down into a crunch position to where your abs are contracted. Without pausing, pull yourself forward another inch or two until your body is upright, or perpendicular to the floor. Slowly return to the starting position. Tip: Don't pause at the top; instead, twitch out of the prestretch position to activate the myotatic reflex.
Cable Crunch - Hook a double-rope attachment to an overhead pulley. Get on your knees facing away from the weight stack and hold the ends of the rope behind your head. Have your partner place his or her hand on your lower back so that you can arch your back and prestretch your abdominals. From this prestretch position quickly twitch and drive down into the abs' fully contracted position. Hold for a count of two and then return to the starting position. Tip: Don't mimic a situp motion; instead, crunch down, curling your torso and bending your spine.
The Hard-Body Diet
No routine will etch in delineation if there's a thick layer of fat covering your midsection. You must be lean if you want those abs to stand out in bold relief, and the key to getting lean is to eat clean.
Clean eating means you focus on consuming the foods that give you the proper fuel for your particular lifestyle. Bodybuilders are anaerobic animals, and that means you need foods that provide you with enough glycogen to fuel high-intensity muscle contractions and enough protein to repair your muscles after you train. A diet that consists of 50 percent carbs, 30 percent protein and 20 percent fat is just about perfect for any athlete interested in building muscle. For example, six ounces of lowfat cottage cheese on top of four pear halves (canned in their own juice, not syrup) gives you 282 calories, 22 grams of protein, six grams of fat and 35 grams of carbs. That translates into 31 percent protein, 19 percent fat and 50 percent carbs, almost a perfect meal as far as bodybuilding macronutrient percentages go.
If you strive to keep all of your meals close to the above percentages and then reduce your calories little by little (say, every week or two) and/or step up your aerobic activity, you can essentially build muscle as you melt fat. This will transform your physique and make your muscles more visible in no time.
If you're really serious about a physical transformation, get a set of fat calipers, such as those in the Accu-Measure Body Composition Kit, so you can monitor your progress. The scale alone simply doesn't cut it, especially if you add muscle as you lose fat. In most cases your scale could be arrested for fraud! For example, imagine putting on five pounds of muscle and losing five pounds of fat. You look fantastic and feel better, but your scale says nothing happened. Talk about frustrating! When you use the AccuMeasure calipers, you can actually track how much muscle you gained and fat you lost, so you know exactly where you stand, no guesswork necessary.
Lose fat at a moderate pace, methodically and sensibly, and use fat calipers to monitor exactly where you stand on a regular basis, and you'll be happier, healthier and sexier and those abs will look as if they've been doing some serious battle with a hammer and chisel.
