Ep. #243: How to Get Abs in 3 Simple Steps That Anyone Can Do

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100 percent natural joint. Supplement Fortify now Fortify helps keep your joints healthy, functional and pain free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss.

And its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and swelling, and to help keep your cartilage healthy, strong, and intact. All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half year warranty. Star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement and another 90 plus reviews on my website.

Also with a four and a half star average. So if you want healthy, functional and pain free joints that can withstand the demands of your active lifestyle, Then you want to head over to www. legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Fortify today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10 percent on your entire order.

And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back. Period. You don’t have to return the products. You don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans.

So you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you. Contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. All righty.

That is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let’s get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from Muscleful Life and Legion Athletics. And in this video podcast, I want to talk abs. How to get abs. Now, of course, this is something that I have spoken about tangentially in many other podcasts and videos and I’ve written about it, but I wanted to put up a quick and simple video podcast that just breaks it down.

Three simple steps. This is all you have to do. If you want to get abs, three steps, no matter how much you might have struggled up until now to get abs. Three simple steps. And they are one, you got to lose the belly fat. Two, you got to do compound exercises. And three, you got to do the right ab and core exercises.

If you can just do those three things, You can have a six pack. Everyone can have a six pack. We can’t all have equally aesthetic, equally symmetrical six packs. Like my abs are staggered and I have three abs on one side and kind of two abs on the other side, unfortunately. It is what it is. It’s genetics, but I have abs.

I have my version of a six pack. Now, the first step is the most important one and that is lose the belly fat because everybody has abs. Everybody has the rectus abdominis muscles and everybody has the other core muscles that together make that whole six pack. Look, they’re all there. You just can’t see them necessarily because they’re covered with too much fat.

Now, what many people don’t realize though, is how lean you have to be to really see all of these muscles. And for guys, it’s usually around 10%. That’s when it really all starts coming together. You can see some abs as high as maybe 15%, but it really depends on how you hold your fat. If you tend to hold a lot of fat in your lower abs, Stomach region, which is where a lot of guys do.

You might see slight outlines of abs of 15%, but nothing clear and definitive. For most guys, you got to get down to about 10 percent to just have clear apps, to have that six pack, to have abs without flexing. And in women, it’s usually around 20%. That’s really where they start to show. And as you get below 20 percent for women, and as you get below 10 percent for men, that’s when things really start to get tight and defined.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or Advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle4LifeFitness, Twitter at Muscle4Life, and Facebook at Muscle4LifeFitness. Now, how do you best lose belly fat? I’ll link an article up here that breaks it all down, but the long story short is unfortunately you can’t spot reduce body fat by just like doing a bunch of core exercises.

Study of studies have shown this simply doesn’t work. So you can do all the crunches you want and you won’t necessarily ever see your abs. What you got to do is reduce your body fat percentage. And that’s easy, actually. That’s a simple, straightforward solution. If you just work on reducing your body fat percentage, your body is going to Pull fat from various areas and some of it is going to come from your stomach area Probably not as much as you’d like and not as quickly as you’d like But if you just focus on reducing your body fat percentage, it will happen And again, really what you’re working toward is if you’re a guy you work toward 10 percent if you’re a girl you work toward 20% Okay.

Point number two, which is do a lot of compound weightlifting and I would modify that action and say a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. Now this is important because there are quite a few people out there and I’ve seen them just in the thousands of people that I’ve worked with over the years and guys in particular who they get lean, they get down to about 10 percent body fat and yes, they have abs, but on the whole, their cores are rather unimpressive.

Their cores look underdeveloped and that is because they are underdeveloped. There are a number of muscles that need to be highly developed to have that really tight six pack well put together look. It’s not just the rectus abdominis, which is what most people think of. It’s the blockier, it’s the abs.

You also have other muscles. You have the obliques, you have the transverse abdominus, you have the serratus, all of these muscles need to be well developed to create that really nice looking core. And some people know that. And that’s why they do different core exercises. They’ll spend 30 minutes doing different types of bends and twists and crunches and so forth.

But what many of those people don’t know is that heavy compound weightlifting is simply more effective than any of that. And to be specific there, what I mean is compound exercises. So exercises that involve multiple joints, multiple major muscle groups, stuff like the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press.

The bench press. Those are the big compound exercises that everybody should be doing, assuming that they can, that you don’t have physical injuries or dysfunctions that make it impossible for them to do those movements safely. And by heavy, working with weights that are in the range of about 75 to 85 percent plus of your one rep max.

And taking your sets to the point of one to two reps shy of failure. So this is hard work. And that’s what I mean by heavy compound weightlifting. And again, the reason why I am talking about this in the context of abs is research shows that type of training is generally more effective for training your core muscles than any of the core exercises that you see people doing.

And this is why there are quite a few people out there who simply focus on heavy compound weightlifting. They do your traditional type of strength training. Maybe it’s a starting strength or maybe it’s my program like bigger than you’re stronger or thinner than you’re stronger, which are really just push, pull legs, strength training programs with some accessory work.

And the men’s program has a bit more for the upper body than the lower body. And the women’s program has a bit more for the lower body than the upper body. So many people they’ll do that without any additional ab work. They’ll get lean and they’ll have awesome cores. They’ll have awesome six packs for many people.

That’s all they need to develop those muscles. Some people though need you a bit more, which brings me to my third point, which is do the right ab and core exercises. So this is speaking anecdotally, having worked with thousands of people, I would say it’s probably half in terms of what people that have reached out to me.

So I’ve seen about half. Of people out there that really didn’t need much in the way of abs or core exercises. All they needed was the heavy compound weightlifting. They got lean and they had awesome cores. And then, for every person that had that experience, there seems to be a person who does the heavy compound weightlifting, gets lean and still has an underdeveloped core and has to actually like program specifically some ab and core work in addition to the heavy compound weightlifting to really get the look that they want.

Now, as far as ab and core exercises go, there are many hundreds of exercises that you can do, of course, but if you just focus on the following exercises and you focus on progressing on the following exercises. So getting stronger on these exercises over time, you should be able to get to where you want to be.

And those exercises are the kneeling cable crunch, the captain’s chair, leg raise the hanging leg, raise the air bicycle, the plank and the ab wheel rollout. And the reason why I like these exercises is they allow you to safely train and overload all of your core muscles and they don’t require much in the way of technical skill, flexibility or athleticism.

So they’re simple, they work the muscles that we want to work and they work. And one other little tip that I want to share is weighted ab work is fantastic if you need to develop your rectus abdominis in particular. And my favorite weighted ab exercise is the kneeling cable crunch. Now, in terms of rep range, I would say anywhere from 10 to 30 reps is fine.

And what I like to do personally is I will use a weight that allows me to get 12 to 15 reps. And I usually just work with that weight over time until I’m getting about 20 reps. And then I will bump the weight up. So I’m back down to the 10 or 12 range. and work my way up that way. So that’s progressive overload, of course, which is important when you’re trying to develop muscles, even if they’re smaller muscles, remember progressive overload.

And in the case of exercises that are not weighted, like the hanging leg raise, for example, which you can wait by snatching a dumbbell in between your feet, but it’s awkward. Normally you just don’t do it with any weight. You progress by doing more. And when you build yourself a little ab routine, what I personally like to do is start with a weighted exercise.

So like a kneeling cable crunch, and then move directly to something that is unweighted. So like a captain’s chair, leg raise, directly into that. And then finish with one more unweighted like air bicycles. And so then of course you’re tracking your progress and ideally over time you’re going to be going up in weight on the weighted exercise.

So you know that you’re kneeling cable crunch is going to get stronger and your reps are going to slowly be going up on your unweighted exercises that you are following your weighted with. And that of course all together is your weight. Progressive overload. You are forcing your muscles to get stronger and adapting, which is going to show in the way of development.

So that’s it. That’s really it. Those three steps. You do those three things and just be patient. It’s going to take time and you can develop a great core. Hey there, it is Mike again, I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful and if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that’s it.

Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100 percent natural joint supplement Fortify.

Now Fortify helps keep your joints. healthy, functional, and pain free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss. And its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and swelling, and to help keep your cartilage healthy, strong, and intact. All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half thousand Star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement and another 90 plus reviews on my website.

Also with a four and a half star average. So if you want healthy, functional, and pain free joints that can withstand the demands of your active lifestyle, then you want to head over to www. legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Fortify. Today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10 percent on your entire order.

And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back. Period. You don’t have to return the products. You don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans.

So you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now. Place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.