Workouts for Six-Pack Abs: You’ll Be Surprised what Works Best
Some men who have a six pack just happen to have one, but it seems that women must work harder to get six pack abs. (more…)
Cardio Exercise vs. Diet for Ripped Abs?
If you want hot abs, you might be wondering if diet might be better than cardio, or the other way around:
Perhaps cardio wins over diet when it comes to getting great abs.
To understand which is better for getting ripped abs — cardio or diet — ask yourself this question: Which is better for getting buff arms: cardio or diet?
Which is better for getting sculpted legs: cardio or diet?
Cardio beats diet when it comes to getting ripped abs. Cardio beats diet also when it comes to shaping the arms and legs ‘” though when compared to lifting weights for shaping arms and legs, cardio is inferior.
A person with a gleaming six-pack of abs works out. Almost always, he or she “watches his diet,” but all the diet does is help remove a lot of the fat between the skin and abdominal muscle, so that the abs are more visible.
But if those ab muscles are not trained, and instead are flabby and weak, they won’t show much, if at all, even if you don’t have much fat in that area.
A thin person who does not exercise, or whose exercise regimen is lame, never has a six-pack.
At the most, they have a subtle “arch” in their abs: the outline of where the six-pack is supposed to be — and it is hardly noticeable.
A person who diets and loses weight, but does not exercise, will not have shapely or defined shoulders and arms, either.
In order for muscles to show, including abdominal muscles, they must be exercised.
Cardio can be one great way to condition your abs and get them showing (assuming your body fat percentage is low enough).
Look at Olympic sprinters. They have amazing six-packs. Same with 400-meter specialists.
Even the 800-meter specialists often show six-pack abs, though the shorter the distance that the athlete specializes in, the more prominent the ab muscles tend to be.
This is because 1) High speed running recruits core muscles more than slower speed running, and 2) The training that sprint athletes endure is conducive to high amounts of fat-burning.
Have you ever seen a “really skinny” woman who actually had a puffy waistline and absolutely no abdominal definition? She either doesn’t exercise, or does only mild levels of exercise.
A skinny man, too, may be absent the signs of abdominal definition, especially if he is older.
For ripped abs, don’t overeat. Whittle down the body fat with weight workouts and cardio exercise, preferably high intensity interval training.
Focus on large muscle groups for melting off fat when it comes to weight workouts.
Higher Energy Expenditure: Exercises that target large muscle groups, such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, require more energy and burn more calories compared to those targeting smaller muscles. This increased calorie burn helps in fat loss.
Increased Metabolic Rate: Working large muscle groups can elevate your metabolism not just during the workout but also for hours afterward, known as the afterburn effect or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).
Hormonal Response: Engaging large muscle groups stimulates the release of hormones like testosterone and growth hormone, which aid in fat loss and muscle growth.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/FXQuadro
How Men & Women over 45 Can Get a Six-Pack
You can get a six-pack even if you’re over 45 and have never had one.
But first, here’s what you should NOT do in your quest for a six-pack — these will only waste your time:
-Crunches
-Sit-ups
-Side bends
-Twists
In order for your six-pack to show, your overall body fat percentage must be in the lean range (the leaner you are, the more it will show), and when I say “lean,” I don’t mean skinny like a marathon runner or runway model.
A man can be 5-9, weigh 190 pounds and still be very lean.
A combination of smart eating habits and specific exercises, as well as specific exercise intensity, will help the man or woman over age 45 achieve a six-pack.
The following exercises will help you achieve the abs you dream of:
Deadlift
Squat
Pushup
Chin-up/Pull-up
Sprint intervals
Let’s take this a little further:
Sled push
Tire flip
Hill dash and other forms of high intensity interval training, which can be done with a jump rope, a box or stool for jumping, or even a stationary bike.
Deadlift. Shutterstock/Maridav
Pull-up
Pushup. Freepik.com Racool_studio
Sled push. Pexels-airam-datoon
Squat. Freepik
Tire lift/flip. Freepik
These aforementioned exercises, when done intensely with whatever weight or level feels strenuous and heavy to you, will slash body fat and tone and harden your six-pack region.
Forget crunching, folding up your body and twisting it. People over 45 who can’t figure out why they can’t “get” a six-pack are, no doubt, not focusing on the deadlift, pushup and chin-up or pull-up, for example.
These three exercises actually hit the abs hard. When you see someone doing a sagging pushup, with their midsection drooping rather than their body straight, this isn’t necessarily because their arms are weak.
It’s because their abs (which comprise the core) are weak.
Let’s throw in another great exercise for the abs: dumbbell pushup row.
Work on your deadlifts, squats, pushups and chin-ups — just those alone — plus controlled eating — and you will begin seeing a six-pack, even if you’re over age 45.
The compound strength training moves listed here recruit abdominal muscle; they work the entire core.
When you develop the strength to do chin-ups, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Ask anyone who can do chin-ups or pull-ups for reps if they can “feel” their abs while doing the reps, particularly on the way down from each rep. Listen to their response.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Top image: Shutterstock/Jules43
Could Carrie Fisher Have Prevented Her Heart Attack?
There are steps Carrie Fisher could have taken, other than healthy diet & exercise, that may have prevented the heart attack she suffered on an airplane.
Drugs, alcohol, smoking and crash dieting have been blamed on Carrie Fisher’s heart attack on an airplane.
I was inspired to write this article after reading specific types of comments to news reports about Carrie Fisher’s heart attack.
It goes like this: Someone comments that Carrie Fisher’s poor diet and use of substances caused the heart attack.
Then a slew of opposing comments follow, to the tune of:
• Anyone can get a heart attack.
• A heart attack can strike a healthy, jogging vegetarian.
• Genetics plays a large role; not much you can do to prevent it.
• When your number is up, it’s up.
• Eat healthy and exercise, then die anyways.
• My uncle (or father, husband, wife, sister) ran five miles a day, played tennis and never smoked a single cigarette or had so much as a sip of beer, then had a heart attack at age 48. Not much you can do.
None of these comments mention the prevention of heart attack via heart disease screening tools.
Every woman gets an automatic risk factor for a heart attack on her 50th birthday–depending on which medical institution or cardiologist you speak to. But mayoclinic.com puts the marker at 55 for women.
All women, once they turn 50, should undergo heart disease screening!
A person who is hooked on painkillers, cocaine, smoking and drinking, and who doesn’t embrace a workout regimen, probably isn’t going to care too much about routine heart disease screening.
- Coronary calcium score test
- Cholesterol test
- Stress test
- Annual visits to a cardiologist
Unless they have chest pain and difficulty breathing—and even then, many people let these symptoms go, figuring they’re caused by stress or normal aging.
We don’t know if Carrie Fisher had been having symptoms in the weeks or months leading up to her heart attack and kept quiet about them.
But could she have prevented the heart attack with heart disease screening beginning at age 50?
And nobody says that screening for women must begin at 50; a 35-year-old woman is just as welcome to visit a cardiologist to see if everything seems okay.
She can request an echo stress test; this measures blood flow through the heart during exercise.
And an echocardiogram measures heart function and structure.
The calcium score test involves the CT scanner.
The calcium score test shows the extent of hard or calcified plaque in the coronary arteries. When this stable plaque is present, its amount is correlated to a number: the calcium score.
Calcium scores strongly correlate to the presence of SOFT (unstable) plaque. Soft plaque is the type that can rupture, causing a heart attack.
High “bad” cholesterol and triglyceride levels are associated with high heart attack risk, though heart attacks also occur in people with normal cholesterol.
That’s because there are other pathways to a heart attack other than clogged arteries, such as atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder. This can cause blood to pool in the heart, leading to clots—causing a heart attack.
It really is fair to wonder if Carrie Fisher’s heart attack could have been prevented had she begun getting annual screening for cardiac problems even five years prior to her death.
• What would the various tests, including an EKG, have picked up?
• What would her calcium score have been?
• What would her cardiologist, had she seen one, recommended, based on those test results?
• Maybe she would have been placed on simple aspirin therapy.
• Maybe she would have been advised to have a catheter angiogram if her test results were very concerning (especially if she was having suspicious symptoms—which we still don’t know if she had or not) which then would have revealed a blockage that could have been corrected with a stent–or bypass surgery.
• Even just one test result—the calcium score, if suggestive of heart disease—can frighten a person into taking immediate and aggressive measures to halt its progression and prevent a heart attack.
• Maybe high blood pressure contributed to the airplane event—and high blood pressure can usually be well-controlled with medication and diet.
So whether you think that heart attacks strike people randomly, regardless of their lifestyle habits, or are largely determined by genetics or Martians, this does NOT take away from the fact that cardiac-problem screening can go a tremendously long way in preventing heart attacks!
Even people with healthy lifestyle choices should get screened for heart disease.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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Top image: Shutterstock/ Robert Kneschke
Source: mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-attack/basics/risk-factors/con-20019520
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