Abs by Summer! The Complete Training Program

What is it about six-pack abs that makes it the darling of the fitness industry?

Everybody wants them, but only a select few are able to attain the elusive six-pack.

Why does it seem that abs are so hard to get?

Is it genetics or some super-secret ab exercise training program?

It’s neither of these.

The simple truth of the matter is that anyone (yes, including you) can get abs. And even better:

• You don’t need to follow any weird diets or eating patterns
• You don’t need to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on supplements or illegal drugs
• You don’t need to eliminate entire food groups
• You don’t need to perform 1000s of crunches every day
• You don’t need to perform endless hours of cardio.

The key to getting six-pack abs by summer requires you to:

• Reduce body fat
• Perform compound exercises with heavy weights
• Perform the right ab exercises

Do those three things, and you’ll get the elusive six-pack you’ve always wanted.

It really is as simple as that.

No complicated diet plans, no ridiculous exercise programs, and no expensive supplement stacks.

Getting six-pack abs is possible for everyone. It just requires, time, effort, consistency, and a bit of patience.

Here’s how to do it.

The Real Way to Get Six-Pack Abs by Summer

Lose Body Fat

Every human being on earth has abs. And, in some cases, individuals have very well developed abs. However, the reason everyone isn’t walking around with a chiseled set of abs is simply due to the fact that they have too much fat covering them.

If you get rid of the goo around the midsection, then voila!

You will have your six pack.

Seems pretty simple right?

Well, here’s where things get a bit “sticky.”

You see, the vast majority of “how to get six pack abs” articles and guides you’ll come across are garbage. They’ll fill your head with all sorts of ideas about how you just need to do this one certain exercise, avoid this one particular food, or buy this “special” supplement to eliminate belly fat and get a ripped midsection.

Unfortunately, every single one of these gimmicks is completely bogus.

The truth is that no particular exercise, nor elimination of a singular food, nor magical fat burning pill is going to single-handedly reduce your belly fat.

And contrary to popular belief, doing endless reps of crunches and planks isn’t going to help you spot reduce belly fat either.

While there is some evidence in scientific literature that exercising a muscle group does increase blood flow and lipolysis in that particular region, it’s not really enough to significantly reduce body fat in that region.[1]

Just the same, simply eliminating carbohydrates, gluten, or any other “bad” food isn’t going to help you get abs either.

The path to a chiseled set of abs comes in the way of reducing your body fat percentage.

Get your body fat percentage low enough and you’ll reveal the set of six-pack abs that have been there all along.

How low does your body fat percentage need to be to see your abs?

Generally speaking, guys start to show a solid set of abs around 10-12% body fat and girls around 20%.

So, your first step towards getting abs by summer is to reduce your body fat percentage from where it currently is to around 10% if you are a guy and around 20% if you are a girl.

If you need help setting up a diet to lose belly fat, click here for this step-by-step guide.

Lift Heavy Weights

While losing belly fat and getting lean is vital to revealing your abs, it’s not all that is needed. That’s because being lean simply isn’t enough to have an impressive midsection.

To have a great looking set of abs, you need to build muscle, including the muscles of your core. The best way to do that is by performing compound exercises with heavy weights.

How “heavy” are we talking?

Generally speaking, for the natural lifter looking to build muscle as quickly as possible, the majority of their hard, working sets should be in the range 70-85% of their one-rep max (1RM). This means you’ll be working mostly in the 6-12 rep range on most of your compound movements.

The reason we say you want to perform compound exercises (such as the squat, deadlift, overhead press, and bench press) is that they train multiple muscle groups, recruit the most amount of muscle fibers, and there’s also some research to suggest they are better at developing the core muscles than many of the traditional ab exercises.[2,3]

This is why the most successful muscle-building training programs of all time focus heavily on compound exercises.

When you focus on getting stronger in the bread-and-butter compound barbell exercises, not only are you working your way to a ripped midsection, you’re also building total body muscle and strength. In the end, this leaves you with the “total package” -- abs, arms, glutes, quads, pecs, etc, and not just some scrawny guy who looks like he needs a sandwich.

Click here to see a training program that can help you build muscle faster.

Perform the Best Ab Exercises

Heavy compound lifting will go a long way to building a strong, muscular abdominal section, but to get your abs to really “pop” you will most likely need to do some ab specialization training.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to start doing 1000 crunches every day.

In order to grow your abs, you need to train them with the same principles you used to grow your chest, biceps, and legs -- by performing exercises that challenge the muscles and allow for progressive overload.

This is where the traditional ab exercises come into play.

Now, if you do a search for “the best ab exercises” you’re going to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of different exercises you can perform to strengthen your core. But, truth be told, you really only need a handful of exercises to get the ab development you’re looking for.

Those exercises are:

• Plank
• Hanging leg raise
• Ab wheel rollout
• Kneeling cable crunch
• Captain’s chair leg raise

The reason we picked these five particular ab exercises is that they are effective, they’re simple, and they are safe to perform. They also allow for progressive overload, which is paramount if you’re looking to build a bigger, stronger set of abs.

How do you progressively overload ab exercises?

For bodyweight exercises (plank or ab wheel rollout), this means you increase the amount of time you hold the movement and/or increase the number of repetitions performed.

For example, if you perform 2 sets of 12 reps of the ab wheel rollout one week, your goal the following week is to perform more than 2 sets of 13-15 reps.

Now, for weighted exercises, such as the kneeling cable crunch, your goal is to add weight to these movements over time.

That means when you hit the top end of the prescribed rep range for all sets of an exercise, the following workout, you would increase the resistance by 5-10lbs.

So, for example, let’s say your program includes 3 sets of kneeling cable crunches performed for 10-12 reps. When you can perform 3 sets of 12 reps, the next workout you increase the amount of resistance you use on the exercise and keep it there until you can again perform 3 sets of 12 reps.

How Frequently Should I Train Abs?

The abs are a fairly small muscle group, as such they recovery pretty quickly and therefore can be trained more frequently.

In addition to your heavy compound lifting, we recommend performing an ab workout 2-3 times per week.

To save time, and increase the challenge on your midsection, we like to perform ab circuits, where you will perform three exercises back-to-back-to-back before taking a brief rest and repeating the circuit again.

The way we like to structure our ab circuits is, to begin with, a weighted exercise and follow up with two bodyweight movements. This serves two purposes.

Performing the weighted exercise first ensures your abs are fresh, thereby allowing you to use the heaviest weight possible and provide the greatest overload to your muscles possible.

Secondly, the weighted exercise fatigues the ab muscles, which makes the bodyweight exercises much more challenging.

Abs Training Program

Perform one of the following circuits after your resistance-training workouts 2-3 times per week.

Repeat each circuit two times for a total of 3 rounds, resting 2-3 minutes in between each circuit.

So, if you’re following a 4-day workout split with two upper body sessions and two lower body sessions, your weekly workout structure could look a little something like this:

• Monday - Lower Body A
• Tuesday - Upper Body A + Ab Circuit #1
• Wednesday - OFF
• Thursday - Lower Body B
• Friday - Upper Body B + Ab Circuit #2
• Saturday - Active Recovery
• Sunday - Active Recovery + Ab Circuit #1

Ab Training Circuit #1

• Kneeling cable crunch - 12 reps
• Captain’s chair leg raise - as many reps as possible
• Plank - to failure

Repeat for a total of 3 rounds. Rest 2-3 minutes between rounds.

Ab Training Circuit #2

• Weighted Russian twists - 10 reps per side
• Hanging leg raise - as many reps as possible
• Ab Wheel Rollout - to failure

Repeat for a total of 3 rounds. Rest 2-3 minutes between rounds.

Again when you can complete all reps for all sets for an exercise with a given weight, increase the weight. For non-weighted exercises, aim to increase the total number of repetitions performed or the amount of time under tension before failure.

Can Supplements Help Me Get Abs by Summer?

In line with a proper diet and training program, having the right supplements may help you to lose fat faster and get the abs you’ve always wanted.

Make no mistake, without your training and nutrition in check, no supplement is going to make a hill of beans difference in getting the physique of your dream. But, when your diet and training is dialed in, the right supplements can certainly enhance and accelerate your results, especially when it comes to reducing stubborn belly fat.

Primeval Labs has created an arsenal of supplements to support your diet and exercise programs, including several different pre workouts and thermogenic fat burners.

Pyretic

Pyretic is a groundbreaking stimulant-free thermogenic formula created using natural ingredients that stoke the body’s metabolic furnace without stimulating the cardiovascular system, meaning that Pyretic will not disrupt sleep or lead to feelings of anxiety or jitters.

Pyretic’s mix of ingredients help reduce appetite, boost metabolism and heighten mood, supporting the body's ability to burn fat around-the-clock.

Consume one serving of Pyretic alongside your morning pre-workout serving of Ape Sh*t or Ape Sh*t Cutz and consume another serving 30 minutes before dinner, for a total of 6 capsules daily to support fat burning and appetite suppression all day (and night)!

Ape Sh*t Cutz

Losing belly fat and getting abs requires that you to create and maintain a negative energy balance wherein your body burns more energy than it intakes on a daily basis.

During training, you need something to help push longer and harder in the gym, torching more calories and working your way to six-pack abs that much sooner.

Ape Sh*t Cutz pre workout is a delicious-tasting thermogenic pre workout teeming with ingredients to help you to train harder, burn more calories, and reach new heights of athletic excellence.

Take one serving 20-30 minutes before training and get ready for the pre workout experience of a lifetime.

References

1. Stallknecht, Bente, et al. "Are blood flow and lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue influenced by contractions in adjacent muscles in humans?" American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, vol. 292, no. 2, 2007, pp. E394-E399.
2. Martuscello JM , et al. "Systematic Review of Core Muscle Activity During Physical Fitness Exercises. - PubMed - NCBI." National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23542879.
3. Nuzzo JL , et al. "Trunk Muscle Activity During Stability Ball and Free Weight Exercises. - PubMed - NCBI." National Center for Biotechnology Information, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18296961.