Ab exercises. As you know, six pack abs are not achieved by diet alone, even though the right diet plays a huge role in the process. That's a fact, but which exercises are the best? Opinions differ widely on this topic and this subject on it's own could easily fill a book, due to the huge variety of ab exercises, but we'll try and cover the foundations in this article. There is overwhelming evidence that cardio exercises, combined with crunches and sit ups alone, will not give you ripped abs. Unfortunately, this is the path still taken by many, as a lot of gyms still prescribe this type of exercise plan for those wanting to get ripped abdominals. If we're wanting to get strong flat abdominals, we need to focus on exercises that will build our overall core strength. The best exercises for this are those that require us to keep our bodies stable, while performing them, using our mid-section muscles. Don't worry if this seems unclear as we'll give you a number of examples of these types of very effective ab exercises. One of the important aspects of abdominal fat loss that we've discussed, in our article about female abs, is that the higher the percentage of lean muscle you can develop, the greater will be your RMR or resting metabolic rate. Your body metabolizes or uses more calories on a daily basis as your RMR becomes higher, which is what you want in order to burn fat. daily, which means you're burning more calories day and night, even while you're asleep! Amazingly, around 60 to 70% of your daily calorie expenditure is due to your resting metabolic rate. Your physical activity and the thermic effect of eating food account for the remainder of the calories you burn in a day. (A definition, from Wikipedia, of the "thermic effect of eating food" or TEF is "is the increment in energy expenditure above resting metabolic rate due to the cost of processing food for storage and use.") Two important points to note when it comes to the most effective type of exercises for raising your RMR to get lean and expose abs are: 1. Put much more emphasis on exercises that create "multi-joint" movements which are also sometimes referred to as "compound lifts". These work a number of large muscle groups simultaneously, as opposed to "isolation" lifts or so-called "single joint" exercises. Don't worry if you haven't heard of these terms as I'll explain what they mean with examples. The reality is that compound lifts are much more natural movements and typically what you'd do more of in daily activities or sports. They also burn more calories and stimulate more of the hormones that build muscle. Single joint exercises, on the other hand, are considered to be almost useless by many trainers who are well educated in modern methods. Single joint or "isolation" movements include exercises such as leg curls, tricep extensions, barbell curls, leg extensions and several others. As you can see, some of them are machine based, but all are fairly unnatural when it comes to everyday movements in work or sport. So put your focus on the more effective, and safer, multi-joint routines. These include bench press, chin-ups, push-ups, pull ups, lunges, squats, step-ups and dead lifts. Also exercises like bent over rowing, incline press, shoulder press, snatches, dips and swings. I hope these terms don't sound like a different language to you. If you're just starting to get serious about developing real ripped abs, they could be unfamiliar terms.
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Also we highly recommend checking out the "Truth about Six Pack Abs" which will give you THE most complete and honest guide to developing the ultimate set of six pack abs, or flat lean abdominals. Source: Original article by Richard Beale http://www.absguide.com August 2008
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