Sunday, August 31, 2008

Weight Loss tip for overweight people

One key way to get a six pack ab is not do do crunches madly , but to focus on burning more calories .I've seen over weight people in gym doing biceps curls daily just because they want big biceps .But whats the point in having big biceps with a big belly .So if you workout your core musculature you will burn more calories and increase your lean muscle mass and eventually burn more fat.So the next time you see overweight people doing crunches ,biceps curls stop them and ask them to go for exercises that burn more calories like squats ,bench press , shoulder press etc instead of focussing on muscles like biceps ,triceps,traps .

Saturday, August 30, 2008

How many pounds to loose a weeek ?

It is considered safe to loose 1 or 2 pounds a week. If you lose the weight slower, you will generally be able to maintain more muscle. You need to create approximately a 3500-calorie deficit to lose 1 lb. Hence, if the male in the example above would like to lose 1-lb per week, he could reduce his daily caloric intake by about 500 calories/day to around 2472, or any other combination to create a 3500-calorie deficit per week.


The amount of LEan Body mass ie your muscle is directly proportional to the amount of calories you burn .This is the reason that weight training will be so important to your efforts for getting lean. The more muscle you develop, the easier it will be for you to lose body fat. The more muscle you lose through excessive dieting or excessive endurance cardiovascular exercise, the lower your RMR will go.So to simply put it "More the Muscle ,more the fat you burn ".

Some peolpe think just touching dumbell or a barbell will make them like a hulk. Especially the ladies think so .But on the contrary if you see in a gym the sexiest will be the one that lifts the heaviest of weights.
The best way to achieve this is through proper resistance training. Also, it is very rare for females to respond to weight training by gaining excessive muscle mass.Women simply don’t have the hormonal balance to build too much muscle mass. Now dont quote me the women body builders . I guess most of you know they take hormone injections.

And please dont go for fad and crash diets , they do more bad than good in a long run.And it makes your RMR slower . So, after you return to your old diet you will gain  weight faster.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Daily Caloric Needs calculation formula

You need to multiply your calculated RMR (below given formula) by a factor of

1.3 -sedentary
1.4 -moderately active
1.5 -very active


  • RMR expressed in calories (kcal)/day
  • Height expressed in inches
  • Weight expressed in pounds
  • Age expressed in years

For men: RMR = 66 + (12.7 x height) + (6.27 x weight) – (6.8 x age)

For women: RMR = 655 + (4.57 x height) + (4.36 x weight) – (4.7 x age)


Example: A 190-lb male, 6’0” tall, 28 yrs old, very active

Daily caloric requirements for weight maintenance =

1.5 x (66 + (12.7 x 72) + (6.27 x 190) – (6.8 x 28)) = 2972 calories/day

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)

One of the most important factor in burning body fat is the resting metabolic rate (RMR). The calories you metabolize on a daily basis is a combination of those consumed to support your RMR, those consumed from your daily activities and exercise, and those consumed from the thermic effect of eating meals. 


Your RMR accounts for approximately 60-70% of the calories you expend on a daily basis, while your activities account for approximately 20-30%, and the thermic effect of food accounts for approximately 10%. Now you must be knowing why emphasis is being laid on making the RMR high by increasing your lean muscle mass.The idea here is to burn calories even when you are at rest .

In the next post I've provided formulas for you to calculate your approximate daily caloric needs in order for you to have an idea of how many calories you need per day to maintain the same weight. You can then adjust appropriately in order to lose weight.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

KIller ABS Workout other than crunches

A Couple Surprisingly Killer Abs & Core Exercises

•Front squats is a killler abs workout .You can feel your whole body aching including your abs after you finish this workout .


•Renegade dumbbell rows .Requires lots of stamina to do this and learning to balance is also a key .It works out your abs while you try to stabilise yourself .

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Exercises hard on the back to be avoided.

Listed below are the ab exercises I recommend avoiding because they are either ineffectual or potentially harmful to the back due to excessive psoas recruitment and/or encouraging an arched back:

The Bad Exercises

•Any machine-based ab exercise
•Any machine-based twisting exercise
•Torso twists (they provide no resistance, nor burn many calories)
•Hanging leg raises with an arched back
•Sit-ups with feet supported
•Lying straight-legged leg raises (first 45° off of floor, one leg at a time or both)
•Straight legged sit-ups

Now that we’ve listed the exercises I recommend avoiding, provided below are the exercises that should be focused on in order to best develop the abs and hip flexors, as they provide the most resistance and encourage proper body positioning:

The recommended exercises are put in the next post .

Monday, August 25, 2008

Good exercises for SIX PACK ABS

The Good Exercises

•Hanging leg raises (with hunched back)
•Hanging knee raises (with hunched back)
•Lying leg thrusts (hip thrusts)
•Decline bench leg thrusts (hip thrusts)
•Reverse crunches (crunching hips off floor)
•Ab bicycles (alternating knees to elbows)
•Ab scissors
•Stability ball crunches (weighted for progression)
•Bench crunches
•Alternating (oblique) crunches
•Weighted cable rope crunches (with hunched back)
•Ab wheel
•Stability ball hip flexion (knee tucks)
•Abdominal vacuums (transversus abdominis development)

The difference these exercises make are you are doing this with a hunched back rather than with an arched back. So ,the possiblities of you deveoping a back pain or injury is less.And these variety of exercises train your ABS from different angles making it strong and flexible.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Recommended Exercises for six pack abs

There are literally hundreds of different exercises you can do for ab training, and people are always looking for new ab exercises with the thought that you always need to have a new exercise to get continued results. This is not true. You can pretty much keep using the same core of effective exercises, and change the training variables over time to keep progressing. For instance, you can change the order of exercises, the amount of resistance, the volume of work (sets and reps), the rest periods, the rep speed, or even try a different angle of a certain exercise for variety.

I should also note that in order to maintain balanced muscular development in the “core”, you must also devote sufficient training to the lower back muscles as well as the abdominals and hip flexors. You will get plenty of lower back training to balance out the ab training if you follow the exercises presented in section 9, which is full of lower back strengthening exercises such as deadlifts, swings, and snatches.

In the next post I've listed the exercises that I recommend avoiding because they are either ineffectual or potentially harmful to the back .

Friday, August 22, 2008

Resistance Frequency and Duration of Ab Training

One of the reasons that many people who spend a half an hour during each workout doing hundreds of crunches fail to ever develop six pack abs is that after a certain point, regular crunches just don’t provide much resistance. 

By focusing the majority of your time in the gym on bigger compound movements like squats, deadlifts, lunges, and upper body multi-joint presses and pulls, your body is forced to work harder and burn more calories during and after the workout. Don’t get me wrong, crunches can have their place in a routine, especially for beginners, and advanced versions of crunches can even be challenging enough for well-trained athletes.

So how long should your ab training take? Well, the good news is that you don’t have to spend a half hour or more every day training abs. You can complete an intense ab training session in about 5-10 minutes during your workouts, either at the end or in the beginning of your workout, or on a separate day. I recommend doing your ab training at the end of your workouts to assure that you don’t pre-exhaust the abs when you might need their stabilization to protect your back during some of the bigger compound exercises that might make up your workout.

So the best method is to end the Ab workout at the end of  your workout,so that you will see maximum results.
In reality, you really should train abs like you would any other muscle group. I recommend inserting a tough 5-10 minute ab routine into your workouts 2-3 times per week. That will be more than sufficient to help you fully develop your abs, without over-training them. Remember, your muscles need enough rest to properly develop. In fact, training your abs more than 2-3 times/week may lead to over-training and bring your progress to a halt.

As I noted earlier, in order to fully develop the abs to their potential, you need to train them with exercises that actually provide significant resistance. While I stated that crunches can be a great ab exercise for beginners, once you’ve got some ab training under your belt, you’ll need to start looking to more resistive exercises to make progress in ab development.

Exercises in which you’re curling the lower body up, particularly from a hanging position, provide the most resistance and are much more challenging than curling up the upper body. This is simply due to the fact that your legs are much heavier objects to move than your upper body. So begin your Ab workout with your lower body and once you have fatigued your AB's with that move to the excercises that are based on upperbody movement.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Anatomy Of Six Pack Abs

The abdominals are composed of the rectus abdominis and the lateral abdominal muscles known as the transversus abdominis, and the internal and external obliques. The rectus abdominis runs from your sternum to your pelvis and essentially helps pull your rib cage and your pelvis closer together. The transversus abdominis acts as a natural weight belt essentially holding your insides in, and stabilizing your trunk. The internal and external obliques work to rotate the torso and stabilize the abdomen. The rectus abdominis is the actual visible “six pack” that you see in someone with well-developed abs and a low body fat percentage. However, the lateral abdominal muscles are also very important to develop due to their role in supporting the spine and maintaining a healthy lower back. In addition, developing the transversus abdominis helps pull your stomach area inward giving you the appearance of a smaller waist. Whenever you suck your stomach in (like a guy at the beach trying to hide his gut), you are using the transversus abdominis to perform that movement.


A popular myth is that people think that the upper abs and lower abs can be worked separately. The fact is that you cannot isolate the upper or lower abs. The rectus abdominus is one muscle group and the entire length of the muscle group is activated whether you’re pulling the upper body up or pulling the lower body up. So the technique here is to workout your abs from a variety of different angles to ensure maximum muscle fiber developement.

And one more thing that most people forget is abdominal muscles are just like anyother set of muscles in our body .They too need rest .I have seen people working out their abs heavily everyday with little or no results .If you are going to do that you will end up damaging your muscles .So work out your abs 3 days a week to get optimum results.


Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Reducing Body Fat to show six pack ABS

When people ask me how to go about getting six-pack abs, they usually start talking about all of the crunches and other exercises they spend hours every week performing without seeing any tangible results. The idea is to reduce the body fat % to expose the already developed abs.And 6 pack ABS is not all about crunches .


Granted, a certain level of muscular development of the abs is necessary to have a ripped “six pack” appearance, but ultimately your body fat % is what’s most important. Generally, men need to get below 10-11% body fat to really start to see the abs (they really pop out at 7-8%), and women need to get below 16-19% body fat to really bring out their abs. However, everyone will differ depending on his or her body fat distribution. Based on individual body fat distribution, some people may need to get even leaner than these percentages to be able to see their abs.

Men tend to accumulate more body fat in the abdominal area, whereas women tend to accumulate more body fat in the hips and thighs.There are many methods available to do this, but the methods that will be most accessible to the majority of people are the skinfold caliper method, the bioelectrical impedance method, or estimates using girth measurements of various body part circumferences.Some of the calculations and tables for the girth measurement method can be found on-line or your trainer at your gym may be able to complete the calculations if they have the tables available.
While this manual will provide all of the information you need to know about developing your abdominals to the greatest extent possible given your genetics, the majority of this manual is going to focus on proven strategies and tips that will help you reduce your bodyfat to such levels that your abdominals are clearly visible.

So I guess you must have got an clear idea about the "Six Pack Abs Secret" .My following posts will cover the process steps and diet that you have to follow in order to get a chiseled body .