Easy Steps For Getting A Sculpted Midriff
Men and women through the centuries have desired a chiseled midsection. It’s no coincidence that thousand-year-old sculptures of Greek gods, emperors, and fierce warriors were made to have washboard abs.
If your motivation wears out a week into training abs, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Achieving a shredded midriff isn’t as hard as some people make it out to be. You can achieve your goal in a week if you do the right things.
Fix Your Diet
First and foremost, abs are made in the kitchen. There is no one diet fits all approach. A lot of trial and error goes into designing the right diet program. Building abs usually involves getting rid of a few extra kilos which can require you to be in a calorie deficit state.
In a calorie deficit diet, you’re burning more calories than you’re consuming. Since you’re on an ab building crash course, if you don’t know how to build your diet program, it’s better to take the help of a professional. It can save you a lot of time and effort.
Switch-Up Your Core Training Approach
Most people follow a vanilla training program where they perform a couple of ab exercises at the end of their workouts. No wonder you can’t see any results following this approach. If you usually train your core at the end of your workouts, you should begin your training sessions with an ab workout.
Your core training needs to have variety. Utilize free weights, cables, and resistance bands in your core workouts apart from the usual bodyweight exercises. Train your core the same way you train all the other muscle groups.
Ramp Up The Cardio
If you have a layer of fat you want to get rid of, there is arguably nothing more effective than cardio. We recommend doing two cardio sessions a day to kill the excess body fat. You’ll be doing a LISS and HIIT session each.
The LISS or low-intensity steady-state cardio should be done first thing in the morning in a fasted state for 30 minutes. The HIIT or high-intensity interval training should be done for 10-minutes post resistance training.
Train Your Abs Every Day
Most people are scared to train their abs every day. They have been told training abs every day can lead to overtraining. Abs are a small muscle group and can recover relatively quickly after a workout.
You shouldn’t worry about overtraining because every person doesn’t have the capability of training their abs with the intensity required to achieve the state of overtraining. A rule of thumb should be to train your abs every day if they’re not sore.
No Cheating!
Since you’re on a deadline, you can’t afford to throw off your progress by feasting on junk food. You’ll have to say no to eating out, cheat meals or going out for a couple of drinks. You’ll have to stick to your diet plan.
Not cheating isn’t limited to your diet, you’ll have to follow your training and cardio programs religiously. Cutting out the junk food for a few weeks is an incredibly effective way of controlling your waistline.
How often do you train your abs? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
*Header image courtesy of Envato Elements.
