Six pack abs top tip – cut your traditional cardio routine.
It’s quite simple really; if you want to make a six pack then you need go no further than look at the weights rack in any gym or even in your own home. I’ll get to the cardiovascular stuff in a moment, but it’s worth spending a few moments recapping on the science of muscles to give us some sort of context to work in.
When we talk about any sort of weight training, and in this case that which leads to the illusive six pack, the muscles we need to develop are the skeletal muscles – there are others of course which do such activities as moving blood around your body, breathing etc. (These are called involuntary muscles). Of the voluntary muscles that you can actually do something about there are fast twitch muscle fibres and slow twitch muscle fibres. Each large mass of muscle, for example your quads (that is, quadriceps – thigh muscles to the layman) consists of both of these type of muscles, but depending on the sport or activity of the individual you have a greater size of one type of muscle than the other. It is this bunch of muscle which is mostly responsible for being able to squat amazingly heavy weights or in the case of a marathon runner to have incredible endurance.
But not both. You can either life weights or run. Simple as that.
And I am afraid that you are born with a ratio of type I and II which will stay the same for the whole of your life. I will give you a bit more detail on that later.
So what does that matter?
Let’s go back to those fast and slow twitch fibres. Fast twitch fibres are for the lifters, and provide strength, slow twitch provide endurance so are more suited to the endurance runner. Fast twitch fibres activate when you try to shift more than 25% of your maximum strength.
Don’t get confused – the names and fast and slow aren’t descriptive of speed, just activity that the muscle is best used for. It’s easier in fact to refer to them by their technical names: type I (slow twitch) and type II (fast twitch).
