Finding Your Six-Pack

A common goal for many people starting an exercise plan is to work on their abs, with the ultimate goal of developing a six-pack.

What is so often overlooked, and so conveniently omitted in ever ab info-mercial ever made, is that seeing your six-pack doesn't require doing more ab exercises. To see your abs you must cut down on the amount of adipose tissue that your body is storing in that area.

To put it bluntly, you have to lose the belly fat to find the six-pack.

Before you feel like all hope is gone, however, realize that there are ways to lose the weight, it just requires some dedication and self-control.

The biggest way to impact your waistline for most people is to reexamine their diet. In this day and age, it is so easy to consume more calories daily than what we actually need. Whether it is because restaurant portions are out of control or because we drink so many calories from a bottle, there are a multitude of ways to cut back on the number of calories going into our bodies on a daily basis. And if you are able to lower the number of calories going in, your body won't have any excess calories to store as at, which bodes well for your waistline.

Along with calorie control, exercise is also very important to help keep your weight under control. While many people feel that running is the best form of exercise to lose weight, it is far from the only way to get a level of exercise that is good for your health in general, and your abs in particular. Biking, swimming, and walking are all great alternatives to running as a way of burning extra calories. Strength training is another very effective way to burn calories, and has actually been shown to have a longer lasting impact on your metabolism than most forms of cardiovascular exercise. Leisure time activities can also help you burn calories on a regular basis. Playing tennis or racquetball are great forms of fun exercise. Golf is great too, provided you don't spend the entire 18 holes riding in a cart. Most courses are 3-5 miles in length, so if you can walk while playing you will get a great deal of exercise while enjoying a day at the golf course. Even something as fun and easy as playing with your kids or grandkids can provide you with some much needed exercise.

Developing a six-pack is difficult. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you or trying to sell you something--or probably both. But, with some dedication to the plan, it is a totally achievable goal.

Just remember, it won't happen over night and you might need to do a little more than just 8 minutes per day.

Best Ab Exercise

Today's quick tip deals with working on getting those nice looking abs for whatever is left of summer swimsuit season, which depending on where you live could be almost over or still have no end in sight.

While popular perception has long been that doing lots of ab exercises (crunches, sit ups, etc) is the only way to work the muscles needed to craft the sought after six-pack, as with most cases of conventional wisdom, that may not be the whole story. Most ab exercises are contraction based, meaning that as you perform the exercise the muscles are contracting. However, because the main function of your abdominal group is not a contraction movement, working those muscles using primarily contraction exercises is not the most efficient way to see improvements.

Your abs are stability muscles that connect your upper and lower body and allow the entire body to function as a unit. As stabilizers, the best way to work them is in a stabilizing or rotational manner. Therefore, front and side planks are two great ways to really tone your abs. Doing exercises on a stability ball, or just trying to sit on one for portions of the day, also works your core muscles. Twists and chops are good options as well.

Of course, the biggest factor in determining how good your abs look really has nothing to do with what kind of ab exercises you do. But that's another topic for another day....