Six-Pack Workouts

Without going into details on exactly what exercises you should do to six-pack abs, I cover the much more important aspects regarding six-pack workouts. The importance of strength training, resistance training and cardiovascular as well as abdominal training are explained on this page. For examples of each of these workouts you can watch my videos on YouTube. This information however, sketches the big lines of working out and training to get visible six-pack abs.

Flexibility Fitness Nutrition Workouts

Nutrition & Working Out

Apart from nutrition, working out is important. Most fitness trainers and nutritionists will tell you that getting six-pack abs are made in the kitchen. If you combine proper nutrition with a good workout schedule or higher activity level you will some day get the results you wanted!

Most important is strength training to gain muscle mass and cardiovascular exercises to burn calories. Less important are abdominal exercises. Working out your abdominal muscles will make them bigger. That way they are easier to see when your body fat percentage is low enough.

Strength training

Strength training with body weight, free weights or machines will help you to build muscle mass. Muscle mass is a very active material. Body fat on the other hand can be described as lazy. It does not have a lot of activity going on. Activity burns energy as you might know from reading other articles on my website. That is why people who have more muscle mass find it easier to stay in good shape.

Cardiovascular exercises

Cardiovascular exercises or endurance training will burn energy and therefore help you to create a shortage of energy. Cardio does not burn body fat directly as is often claimed. Your body will only use body fat as energy if there are not enough calories anymore. Endurance exercises mostly burn carbohydrates in the first 20 to 30 minutes of training. After that it uses the fat that is stored in your body.

Instead of doing endurance training or low intensity cardiovascular exercises you can also choose for high intensity cardio. You can find more information about this under the button 'cardio' > High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT is too short to get in the 'fat burning stage' of the training. During recovery it is said to burn more calories compared to endurance training. That is why HIIT is also an effective way to lose weight.

Finally abdominal exercises

Finally abdominal exercises are used to build bigger and stronger muscles. Bigger abdominal muscles are easier to see even through a thin layer of fat. However, you can do a thousand sit-ups each day, but still not have a six-pack. As long as your body fat percentage is too high you will not see your abs. So priority number one is nutrition and weight loss. This does not mean you should stop doing ab exercises though. It is, after all, active tissue and therefore helps burn more calories. Strong, developed abs are also better visible and pleasing to the eyes.

To Summarize

Muscle mass is active and therefore burns more calories. Being more active by doing cardio or performing other physical tasks can burn more calories too. When your body has a shortage of energy, it will start to burn body fat. By eating less calories (nutrition) and by burning more calories you can burn more body fat and get six-pack abs! Training your six-pack can increase the size and strength of this muscle group. Bigger abs are better visible, which is what ab exercises are good for.