It’s summer time again, and you’re telling yourself you’re going to work out your abs and grasp that ever elusive six pack. You’ve dreamt about it all winter long, so now it’s time to get that gut into tip-top shape. And here are three of the best ab workouts that will help you do just that …

The Reverse Crunch

Reverse?!?! You might be thinking you already have enough trouble with the normal crunch and the reverse crunch will only be ten times harder. But really, it’s a pretty straightforward way to work out your six pack region, it’s one of best ab workouts, and lower ab workouts (which can also help reduce back pain and relieve stress from your spine). To do this abdominal exercise right:

Lying on the floor, place your hands either on the floor beside your body or place them behind your head.
Bring your knees toward your chest so that they are bent in a 90 degree angle. Keep your feet together, or cross them.
Contract your abs so that your hips curl off the floor, and reach your legs up toward the ceiling.
Lower your body and repeat for 10-15 reps.

The movement that takes place in this abdominal exercise is very small and it’s important to use your abs to lift your hips versus using the momentum of your legs. It’ll feel like it only works out your lower abs, but in all honesty you can’t separate the lower from the upper and doing workouts that benefit both is extremely important.

The Windshield Wipers

If you think of the amount of action your windshield wipers perform during a bad storm, you can begin to imagine how great this abdominal workout will be for your body. And whenever you’re starting to get tired or on the verge of quitting, just visualize the rock hard abs you’ll get and what they’ll look like as water from the pool glistens against them, this is truly a killer ab workout.

Start by lying on your back with your arms in a “T” position, i.e. arms spread out so your body looks like the letter T.
Lift your legs so that they are at a 90 degree angle (perpendicular to the floor).
Without breaking contact with the floor, rotate your hips so that your legs move left to right (like a windshield wiper).

Do 10-15 reps.

Make sure you move slowly when doing this exercise. Also, keep your movements controlled. Remember you aren’t actuallya windshield wiper and therefore, in this case, speed can cause more damage than good.

The Jack Knife

As dangerous as this abdominal exercise sounds, that’s how dangerous your abs will look after a few weeks of doing it, this is one of the best ab workout around.

Lie on your back and extend your arms above your head (you’ll be forming one long line with your body).

At the same time, lift your legs and arms toward the ceiling. Do this until your fingertips touch your toes. If your fingers can’t touch your toes, that’s fine. Go as far as you can.
Slowly lower your arms and legs, returning to the starting position.

Do 10-15 reps.

Sounds simple, right? It really is. Allof these abdominal exercises are some of the best ab workouts around. Mix these into your regular exercise regime and you’re on the road to having that six pack you’ve only dreamed of. If you don’t have a normal workout regime, make sure you make one. Doing cardio work (along with a decent diet) will help speed up your journey toward having a ripped stomach.

Everyone wants great abs. And now that it’s summer time, having a washboard mid section is the goal of every man and woman out there. But if you’re too ashamed to show your face at the gym in your current condition (or maybe your excuse is you just don’t have the time), guess what? You don’t need a medicine ball or one of those captain’s leg machines. Here are some great ab workouts and 5 of the best abdominal exercises you can do all on your own:

Abdominal Exercise #1: The Vertical Leg Crunch

This is a fairly straightforward abdominal exercise that helps build up that six pack and also shapes up your obliques (no more love handles). To do this exercise correctly:

Lie face up on the floor with your legs extended straight up and your knees crossed.

Tighten your abs as you lift your shoulder blades off the floor (this motion should feel like you’re reaching your chest to meet your feet).

At the top of this movement, stimulate bringing your bellybutton in toward your spine. Make sure your feet remain in the fixed position.

Lower your shoulder blades and relax your bellybutton.

Repeat this exercise for 10-15 reps on a regular basis and you’re well on your way to a six pack stomach and great abs!

Abdominal Exercise #2: The Bicycle

The Bicycle is considered the best abdominal workout move to build up a six pack and tone your obliques. It’s also probably one of the easiest. After all, you’re more or less simulating riding a bicycle (Note: actually riding a bike regularly has proven to be one of the great ab workouts and can help build your ab muscles as well; this exercise just works faster and might be considered less exhausting). But since you’re not actually on a bike, it’s important you do this ab exercise properly:

Lie face up on the floor, lacing your fingers behind your head.

Bring your knees in toward your chest and lift your shoulders blades off the ground. Make sure you don’t pull on your neck; keep it as relaxed as possible.

Straighten your right leg out, simultaneously turning your upper body to the left. Your right elbow should be brought in toward the left knee.

Do the same with the opposite side, i.e., left elbow toward right knee.

Continue to alternate sides in this “pedaling” motion until you’ve completed 10-15 reps. Easy enough, right? Start “biking” your way to ripped abs now!

Abdominal exercise #3: The Full Vertical Crunch

This abdominal exercise is all about working out your upper and lower body. A lot of people worry about getting a pudge from normal crunches since only one area of the body is building muscles. The Full Vertical Crunch will tone your abdominal region evenly. Follow these instructions to do it correctly:

Lying on your back, extend your legs in the air.
Cup your head in your hands (place your hands behind your head).
Contract your abs so that they left your shoulder blades off the floor.
As you do this, press your heels toward the ceiling (your torso will create a ‘u’ shape).
Lower your shoulder blades and heels and repeat for 10-15 reps.

All three of these abdominal exercises will help tone your body and build the perfect six pack. You can even combine all three exercises to create the ultimate abdominal workout. You can find many more abdominal exercises in the Truth About Six Pack Abs.

We all know by now that soda is one of the worst things that you could drink while trying to get in shape, with all those chemicals, high fructose corn syrup, and a number of health problems that could be a direct result of this carbonated cocktail that is worshipped by those that don’t care about their health or body. I know because your reading this, that you do in fact, care about you body and health, so back to the question, is diet drinks good for you?

Some people really believe that drinking diet beverages is a good thing while trying to loose abdominal fat. In fact, I’ve talked to a lot of people that are so proud to say they are on a great diet eating all the right foods and they only drink diet soda.

I will tell you right now, there is NOTHING at all healthy about drinking diet beverages. In fact, I have seen diet soda studies that have dedicated diet soda drinkers and got even fatter than there regular soda drinking counterparts. This should already answer your question, diet soda is not good for you at all, does it make you fatter? Without a doubt.

You may be thinking “How does diet soda make you fat”? I thought it was better for you?

Here are some findings of a 8 year study done by a Texas University that I have read in the past.

Below are claims by the students that did the study.
“What we found and was not that surprising, was that the total soft drink use was linked to the overweight”

“What the surprising fact was that when we looked at the people only drinking diet beverages, there risk to stay overweight was even higher.”

“There was a 42 percent increase in risk of being overweight, per can of diet soda they drank per day.”

Ok, so now all these studies and facts are coming out saying how bad diet soda is and how it makes you fatter, when everyone thought regular soda was the bad guy. Well, there are many factors that you need to realize first.

Right of the bat, all of the artificial sweeteners in diet drinks create a negative hormonal response in your body and the fat storing hormone increases production. When this happens, the fat storing hormone tells your body its hungry for more sweets and bad carbohydrates in a short time period after consuming the diet beverage.

Another reason why people get fatter while drinking diet drinks is because they subconsciously think they can eat more of everything else, Which means more overall daily calorie intake. There is a great article about this in the The Truth About Six Pack Abs eBook.

This is to inform you that you really need to just stop drinking diet soda or any other diet drink with artificial sweeteners. There is really no other way around it.

So what are good alternatives to diet drinks?

One of the best is just plain water with a lemon wedge or unsweetened iced teas. many options. Your many options are Black, White, Green, Red or Oolong. You can get creative and as a bonus you will be getting a much more array of antioxidant’s.

The test of truly strong abs in when you can supplement your own body weight while doing abdominal exercises. If you’re able to support your weight primarily through your ab strength, you’ve definitely reached the next level of definition and strength in your mid-region. To test your abdominal strength, or to begin reaching this next level, you can use the parallel bars, along with ankle weights or a medicine ball, to perform this great abdominal exercise to get abs fast.

Hip Raises

Doing hip raises on parallel bars require that you have some abdominal strength. Even if you don’t exactly have the abs, doing this exercise can help begin to build your ab muscles and take them to new heights. Using a medicine ball or ankle weights force your abs to do more work and is a more challenging way to work out your abdominal muscles.

Strap ankle weights onto each leg, or place a medicine ball between your knees.
Your body should be straight (up and down) with the entire weight supported by your arms.

Raise your legs and hips toward your chest; your goal is to try and form at least a 90 degree angle with your body.
Focus on tightening your abs as you pull your legs up. If your hips are not being moved upwards, this means you are not using your lower abs during this exercise. Your goal is to exercise both the upper and lower abs.

Once your legs are as high as you can left them, hold them in this position for one second. DO NOT hold your breath as you attempt to hold them steady. Remember to breathe.

Slowly lower your legs and return to the vertical position you started again.
Repeat for 10-15 reps. and you will get abs fast

You can also perform this exercise using a Roman chair or dip bars, especially if you’d rather have a back rest to provide better stability. If your ab strength is on the weak side, you might want to consider practicing this abdominal workout without using the weights or medicine ball. This will not only help build up your abs, but also develop muscle memory when the motions are required and the extra weight has your doubting your ability.

This type of abdominal exercise really helps to strengthen your core and make you a stronger person. After all, there’s a lot more to having great abs than making the ladies (or gentlemen) swoon.

If you are asking yourself this question, then you will want to read this article, because hopefully it will get you thinking differently and trying new things.

As you probably know there are tons of people that believe that you don’t need cardio and then there are others that swear by it. As far as you are concerned, you can make your own choices, just make your choice after reading this article, “Do You Need Cardio to Get Lean and Obtain Flat Stomach?” This article contains “anti-traditional cardio.”

Most weekend warrior type or fitness minded type people trying to lose stomach fat and get in shape, would consider cardio a must to lose stomach fat or tone up there mid-section.

However, I’m not only questioning it, in fact, you may be surprised to know that some of the leanest and meanest people never do any type of normal or traditional cardio.

One the other hand, low to moderate cardio for really overweight people can be good, but even then there are more productive methods out there.

Most people consider cardio to be running miles on a treadmill, riding miles on a stationary bike, or gliding along on a elliptical machine wathing a TV screen at their local gym. This is what I consider to be traditional cardio, and at least 50% of the people doing this give up after a few months after not seeing results.

In reality, if you think about it, cardio exercise can be any exercise or activity that strengthens the cardiovascular system. I’m not going to get into anything technical like increasing your VO2 max or anything like that. Just to keep it simple, if it gets your heart pumping, and gets you huffing and puffin and sucking air, it’s cardio. I don’t care if you’re holding dumbbells or a barbell and everyone calls it a weight training exercise still conditioning your heart.

Let’s take a look at a couple examples. Take a barbell (or dumbbell, orkettle bell) clean & press for example, which involves lifting a barbell from the floor up to shoulders, then push pressing overhead. And listen up ladies, because even though this is usually seen as a manly exercise, it doesn’t matter if you’re not lifting 250 lbs; if 45 lbs is challenging to you, then you will still benefit just as much.

At first glance, most people think of the barbell C&P only as a weight training exercise or strength exercise. However, I challenge you to do a hard set of around 10-15 reps on the C&P. If you used a challenging enough weight, what you’ll find is that your heart rate is probably up to about 80-90% of your recommended max, and you are huffing and puffing like you just ran a 100-meter sprint (which by the way, sprinting kicks the crap out of jogging any day if you want the easiest way to lose the flab).

Try the same thing for a set of 20 reps of one-arm snatches or swings with each arm with akettle bell or dumbbell, and tell me your legs aren’t burning, heart racing, and you’re gasping for breath. How about trying 5 minutes straight of bodyweight squats, lunges, and push ups with very little rest. Again, notice your heart pounding, sweat pouring off of you, and chest heaving for breaths!

Now, you try and tell me you are not going to conditioning your heart with this style of exercising. traditional thinking tell you this is a weight training style program. in reality this these types of exercise are in fact cardio also because they are conditioning your heart.

Not only will you be conditioning your heart but you will be using every muscle in your body giving you a full body exercise and therefore a better workout. If you do them with enough intensity…something that can’t be said for that boring stationary bike ride or treadmill jaunt while reading a book or magazine while exercising.

By the way if you are able to read a novel or magazine while exercising you are not concentrating enough on what you’re doing, plus you’re probably not working out hard enough to see any real results.

I challenge you to give the “traditional cardio” a rest for a month or two, and start training the way the internationally best selling eBook The Truth About Six Pack Abs explains.