Will Ab crunches alone give you six pack abs? Learn how to get Six pack abs in weeks

There is always a lot of fantasy around Six pack abs. And the first thing that comes to most peoples’ minds is Ab Crunches. People quite often assume that Ab Crunches alone can give those chiseled six pack abs. There are numerous Ab crunch machines marketed over the internet and TV claiming to provide six pack abs just by working out for a few minutes.

To start with, everyone has Six packs in their bodies. The muscle is called rectus abdominus, a paired muscle which runs vertically on each side of the abdomen and the corresponding vertical connecting tissues and the horizontal lines that give the Six pack. But the problem is, for most of us, the six packs are covered by Flabs and hence it’s not visible. So, in order to make it visible, you need to burn all the unwanted fat and Flabby muscles. Will Ab crunches alone do the job? Absolutely not!!! I have seen many people doing Ab Crunches for years but they haven’t reduced an inch around their waist. The truth is, our body will first start putting fat and flab first around the mid section i.e, Tummy. At the same time, if you reduce your body, the abdominal fat will be the last to disappear. You will NEVER get Six pack abs unless you get chiseled muscles on all the other parts of the body viz, shoulder, chest, biceps, triceps, thighs etc.

There is nothing in the world called “Spot Reduction”. You cannot reduce a particular part of your body through exercise. If you want to reduce your abdomen, you need to bring down the overall weight. Even if you do 500 crunches per day, your abdomen will not shrink. You will not see any tangible effect unless you reduce your overall body dimensions

Most people are ignorant of the above fact and continue falling prey to costly weight reducing equipments and so called “Weight reduction/Fat burn pills”

Well, one needs to devise a workout and diet regimen first. Cardiovascular exercises like Running, jogging and skipping are the best in burning fat. You could start these in light intensity, then move onto moderate intensity and then to heavy intensity. Higher the intensity more will be the fat burning effect. A moderate intensity workout of 30-40 minutes four times a week is more than enough. Simultaneously, cut down on food intake. Diet control doesn’t mean fasting. Fasting is bad for health. You just need to reduce Carbohydrate and fat intake and at the same time increase protein intake. If one needs to reduce from 200 lbs to 140 lbs and obtain a six pack, he/she should do the same in a period of around 3 months. If she/he does it in 1 month through fasting, it’s bad for health. You metabolism will get affected and you will once again put on weight in the same pace in which you lost it.

What happens when you fast? Suppose the person above is consuming 2500 calories per day. In order to reduce his weight to 140 lbs, he decreases his calorie intake to 1400 calories per day. He may lose weight rapidly but he may not know that he's losing only his muscles and not fat. As a result, he will lose only weight and never reduce his fat. He will become weak and starved and will eventually cheat and eat heavily to regain his energy. But, he will only gain fat again leading to increase in weight. So, Fasting is NOT the solution to reducing fat

Hence it’s important to follow a proper leaning/reducing regime

Now let’s come back to the six pack abs…..The six pack will start appearing only when your body weight reaches around 150 lbs. Only at this stage, Ab crunches will be effective. This is the bottomline. In other words, Fat people will not benefit anything from Ab crunches at all if they do not bring their overall weight to a decent muscle mass stage which is somewhere between Bulk mass and Lean mass.

Even at this stage, doing Ab crunches alone will not help you. You still need to combine them with Diet control and Cardiovascular exercises like running and skipping. If you are able to go to Gym, then hit the Treadmill and the cross trainers and do the Ab crunches simultaneously. Ideally, the Ab crunches must be done once the cardiovascular exercises are over. The reason being, the cardiovascular exercise would have already mobilized the fat deposits and increased the overall metabolism. Weight training could also be combined but they are not as effective as Cardiovascular exercises when it comes to weight reduction. Further, weight training is anaerobic and you may be forced to eat more after your workout in order to compensate the energy loss from your muscles.

Most people would stick with a particular ab workout, for example, Reverse Crunch. This may not be efficient. Further, it could lead to muscle injuries or back pain. You need to combine 4-8 exercises and do them every 2 days in different combinations. For example, do three different workouts on Monday and the next three on Wednesday. Rest is very important because muscles need to relax. Rest period of 48 hours would be ideal. Do different Ab workouts like Side crunch, hanging crunch, leg lift etc in 3-4 sets of 20-25 repetitions each.

Ideal Ab workout regimen:

An ideal Ab workout regimen should focus on all the below areas of your mid-section

Obliques:

For obliques, the following exercises are advised:

* Dumbbell side bend

* Oblique Crunches

* Knee Raise to the sides (Lying)

*Knee Raise to the sides (Hanging)

Rectus Abdominis :

* Reverse Crunch

* Decline Crunch (without weights)

* Decline Crunch (With weights)

* Leg Raise (Lying)

* Leg Raise (Hanging)