Idle Guide To Fitness by The Idle Man - HTML preview

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 Best Exercises for Your Core Strength

There’s good news and bad news on this subject matter!

The good news is that there are many really good exercises for your Abdominals, to strengthen, as well as help you get that elusive six-pack, and we will be showing you three really good ones in this post.

The bad news is that “flat stomachs” and “six-packs” are, largely, made in the kitchen and not in the gym!

So, taking the kitchen bit first, you really need to look at the following points to help get you the stomach you’ve always wanted:

Reduce/cut out bread of any kind

Reduce/cut out all sugar

Increase your water intake to 2-3 litres per day (not including cups of tea/coffee etc)

Aim to eat 7 portions of fresh vegetables every day

Aim to eat 3 portions of fruit every day

Reduce the amount of food you buy that is in packaging on the supermarket shelf or out of a tin

Increase your protein intake and monitor your carb intake

The list could go on much further of course, but in a nutshell just implementing these few small changes will help to reduce your overall body fat percentage, which will reflect very positively on your stomach! You wont achieve any where near a “flat stomach” with a body fat over 20%.

In general terms, try to avoid eating anything that is labelled with more than 14-20% fat whilst looking very closely at the sugar content and making sure that it isn’t too high. If something says “fat-free” be warned as it could well be fat free but it may be loaded up with sugar, which is just as bad!

So, that’s the general idea with regard to the eating side of things, now to the exercises. The following three exercises show how to strengthen your Abs and lower back to ensure that you develop a strong set of Abs, above and beyond looking for a six-pac.

Leg Raises

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Ball Rollouts

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Tucks

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These are just three exercises, there are, of course, many more that work the Abs and Lower Back just as well.

Also, there are many exercises that are great for core strength such as Press Ups, Pull Ups and Squats, that are not thought of as “stomach exercises”. These exercises also work big muscles groups so have the advantage of working more muscles and burning more calories, which helps to reduce body fat thus leading to a “flatter” stomach.