Progressive Resistance
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March 24, 2015 at 11:09 am
Progressive resistance is one of the main principles of weight training. In order for your muscles to grow, you need to keep them working their hardest. If you keep lifting the same weight your muscles will adapt and will not get any stronger. So in order to keep getting stronger you need to keep increasing the weight you are using if it starts to feel easier (but of course never lift a weight that is too heavy for you to maintain proper form).
Remember, stronger and more developed muscles will help you on your quest for a six pack. The more muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be and the easier it will be to burn the fat that’s covering those abs. So make sure to keep the intensity up when weight training.
Weight lifting should always feel hard. There are too many people who go to the gym and just go through the motions, and it seems like the weight they are lifting is way too easy for them. If you aren’t struggling to get the weight up during the last few reps you are working out hard enough!
Spring is Coming
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March 15, 2015 at 12:05 pm
Spring is a great time to get your abs in shape for the nice weather. As always I’m here to help, and I’m going to start posting more regularly again after a bit of a hiatus.
P+C Meals
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February 5, 2015 at 4:35 pm
What do I mean by a protein and carb meal? Protein and carb meals are mostly protein and carbohydrates with very little fat. I typically shoot for 5 grams or less of fat in my protein and carb meals.
Some foods that have plenty of protein but very little fat are:
- chicken breasts
- skim milk
- nonfat yogurt
- egg whites
- cottage cheese (low fat or non fat)
- whey powder
P+F Meals
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January 14, 2015 at 4:39 pm
In order to properly carry out macronutrient grouping, you need to know what I mean by a protein and fat meal. Protein and fat meals are mostly protein and fat with very few carbs. To be considered a protein and fat meal I typically shoot for 10 grams or less of carbohydrates.
Some foods that have plenty of protein but are very low carb are:
- chicken
- beef
- fish
- nuts (almonds are the best)
- eggs
The Myth of Spot Reduction
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January 11, 2015 at 11:28 pm
Many people think that you can target certain areas of the body for fat loss by training those areas. This idea is one of the most widely propagated fitness falsehoods, and I call it the myth of spot reduction. This myth makes people think that the way to lose belly fat is to do hundreds of crunches. This is just not true! There are many fitness programs and products that are based on this myth, and they are all crap (remember the thigh master ?). The only way to lose fat off your stomach is to lose fat all over your body by maintaining a caloric deficit. That is why for O6P the order of importance is 1. Nutrition and 2. Cardio because these are the aspects that put you in a caloric deficit, which is what really causes loss of belly fat. Weight training comes in a distant third because its purpose is to maintain your lean mass while in caloric deficit. So instead of doing a bunch of crunches, go for a run or a swim or do some other activity that gets your heart pumping for an extended period of time.
Sample Strength Training Program
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January 6, 2015 at 9:04 pm
The exact details of your weight training program aren’t that important, so if you’ve got one that you like, you can stick with it. If you’re really confused about what kind of program to do here’s a sample one for novice weight trainers. It’s broken down into three different days. The exercises are written as S sets of R reps written SxR (one exercise is repeated R times and after a break the whole thing is repeated S times). The weight should be chosen so that the last rep is quite difficult and you’re really not able to do another rep after it. Be careful not to overdo it because you can injure yourself, and that can set you back.
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Meal Logging is Easy
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January 3, 2015 at 4:30 pm
The only way to guarantee that your body is running a caloric deficit and that you are grouping your macronutrients properly is to log all your meals. Before the rise of computers and smartphones this must have been excruciatingly tedious as it required keeping a notebook and adding up all the calories and nutrients that you had consumed every day. Luckily there are several websites and smartphone apps that makes meal logging relatively easy. The one I use and recommend to my friends is called Lose it. Lose It has apps for Android and iPhone or you can log online.
The interface to Lose It is quite straightforward. You just add food for every meal throughout the day, and it adds up your calories and nutrients. Lose It has thousands of foods in its database, but if you eat something that isn’t in the database you can add the food yourself (either manually or by scanning the barcode). I find that if a food that I eat is not in Lose It’s database (which happens rarely) that I can find the nutritional values for that food on the internet and add it to Lose It as a new food. Once you add a new food it is saved to the database so you won’t have to add it again.
My friends who use Lose It find it takes a little getting used to at first, but once you’ve used it for a few days it’s very easy to record what you eat. This is especially true if your meals tend to repeat since you can add whole meals that you’ve previously eaten to your log for the current day. I find that it takes me less than ten minutes per day to record everything I’ve eaten. I don’t consider ten minutes per day a very large investment towards the goal of a sixpack.
2015: Year of the Six Pack
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January 1, 2015 at 12:15 pm
The new year is a great time to start something that you have never done before, and that’s why I’m starting this website today. Over the next weeks and months, I’ll be updating this website with tips and encouragement that will help you towards your goal of six pack abs. So get reading and good luck!