Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Get Abs in 3 Simple Steps That Anyone Can Do

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

I’m not sure any of us can say why, but having abs is cool. They’re sexy, something to be proud of. To show off, even. They’re the fitness equivalent of “having arrived.” That’s probably why many people start working out with the sole purpose of getting a six pack. And then the confusion begins. Diet after diet, workout after workout, supplement after supplement, all claiming to be the key to getting a ripped core. Frustration is next. After months of trying anything and everything, still no abs. Just belly flab. Well, if you can relate to any of that, you’ve come to the right place, because in just a few minutes, you’re going to know the exact steps to get abs. And I think you’re going to be happy to see that it’s much easier than you’ve been led to believe by mainstream “gurus.” At bottom, there are just three things you have to do to get the abs you really want: 1. Lose the belly fat. 2. Do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. 3. Do the right ab and core exercises. Yup, that’s it. No “weird tricks” or strange diets or silly supplements. Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

This episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural joint supplement Fortify. Now, Fortify helps keep your joints healthy, functional, and pain-free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss. And its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and swelling and to help keep your cartilage healthy, strong, and intact. All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement.

And another 90 plus reviews on my website also with a four and a half star average. So if you want healthy, functional, and pain-free joints that can withstand the demands of your active lifestyle, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Fortify today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose

here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. All righty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from Muscleful Life and Legion Athletics. And in this video podcast, I want to talk abs, how to get abs. Now, of course, this is something that I have spoken about tangentially in many other podcasts and videos, and I've written about it, but I wanted to put up

a quick and simple video podcast that just breaks it down. Three simple steps. This is all you have to do. If you want to get abs, three steps, no matter how much you might have struggled up until now to get abs, three simple steps. And they are one, you got to lose the belly fat. Two, you got to do compound exercises. And three, you got to do the right ab and core exercises. If you can just do those three things, you can have a six pack. Everyone can have a six pack. We can't all have equally aesthetic, equally symmetrical six packs. Like my abs are staggered and I kind of have three abs on one side and kind of two abs on the other side, unfortunately, is what it is. It's genetics, but I have abs. I have my version of a six-pack. Now, the first step is the most important one, and that is lose the belly

fat because everybody has abs. Everybody has the rectus abdominis muscles and everybody has the other core muscles that together make that whole six pack. Look, they're all there. You just can't see them necessarily because they're covered with too much fat. Now, what many people don't realize, though, is how lean you have to be to really see all of these muscles. And for guys, it's usually around 10%. That's when it really all starts coming together you can see some abs as high as maybe 15 but it really depends on how you hold your fat if you tend to hold a lot of fat in your lower stomach region which is where a lot of guys do you might see slight outlines of

abs of 15 but nothing clear and definitive and And for most guys, you got to get down to about 10% to just have clear abs, to have that six pack, you know, to have abs without flexing. And in women, it's usually around 20%. That's really where they start to show. And as you get below 20% for women, and as you get below 10% for men, that's when things really start to get tight and defined. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram

at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Twitter at Muscle for Life and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Now, how do you best lose belly fat? Well, I'll link an article up here that breaks it all down, but the long story short is, unfortunately, you can't spot reduce body fat by just like doing a bunch of core exercises. Studies have shown this simply doesn't work. So you can do all the crunches you want and you won't necessarily ever see your abs. What you got to do is reduce your body fat percentage. And that's easy. Actually, that's a simple, straightforward solution. If you just work on reducing your body fat percentage, your body is going to pull fat from various areas. And some of it is going to come from your stomach area. Probably not as much as you'd like and not as quickly as you'd like, but if you just focus on

reducing your body fat percentage, it will happen. And again, really what you're working toward is if you're a guy, you work toward 10%. If you're a girl, you work toward 20%. Okay, point number two, which is do a lot of compound weightlifting. And I would modify that actually and say a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. Now this is important because there are quite a few people out there and I've seen them just in the thousands of people that I've worked with over the years and guys in particular who they get lean, they get down to about 10% body fat and yes, they have abs, but on the whole, their cores are rather unimpressive. abs, but on the whole, their cores are rather unimpressive. You know, their cores look underdeveloped and that is because they are underdeveloped. There are a number of muscles

that need to be highly developed to have that really tight six pack well put together. Look, it's not just the rectus abdominis, which is what most people think of. It's the block here. It's the abs. You also have other, other muscles. You have the obliques, you have the transverse abdominis, you have the serratus. All of these muscles need to be well-developed to create that really nice looking core. And some people know that, and that's why they do different core exercises. They'll spend 30 minutes doing different types of bends and twists and crunches and so forth. But what many of those people don't know is that heavy compound weight lifting is simply more effective than any of that. And to be specific there, what I mean is compound exercises. So exercises that involve multiple joints, multiple major muscle groups,

stuff like the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, the bench press. Those are the big compound exercises that everybody should be doing, assuming that they can, that they don't have physical injuries or dysfunctions that make it impossible for them to do those movements safely. And by heavy, I mean working with weights that are in the range of about 75 to 85% plus of your one rep max, and taking your sets to the point of one to two reps shy of failure. So this is hard work. And that's what I mean by heavy compound weightlifting. And again, the reason why I am talking about this in the context of abs is research shows that that type of training is generally more effective for training your core muscles than any of the core exercises that you see people doing and this

is why there are quite a few people out there who simply focus on heavy compound weight lifting you know they do your traditional type of strength training maybe it's a starting strength or maybe it's my program like bigger than you're stronger or thinner than you're stronger, which are really just kind of push pull legs, strength training programs with some accessory work. And the men's program has a bit more for the upper body than the lower body. And the women's program has a bit more for the lower body than the upper body. So many people they'll do that without any additional ab work. They'll get lean and they'll have awesome cores. They'll have awesome six packs. For many people, that's all they need to develop those muscles. Some people though need to do a bit more, which brings me to my third point, which is do the right ab and core exercises.

So this is speaking anecdotally, having worked with thousands of people, I would say it's probably half, half in terms of what people that have reached out to me. So I've seen about half of people out there that really didn't need much in the way of abs or core exercises. All they needed was the heavy compound weightlifting. They got lean and they had awesome cores. And then, you know, for every person that had that experience, there seems to be a person who does the heavy compound weightlifting, gets lean and still has an underdeveloped core and has to actually like program specifically some ab and core work in addition to the heavy compound weightlifting to really get the look that they want. Now, as far as ab and core exercises go,

there are many, many hundreds of exercises that you can do, of course. But if you just focus on the following exercises and you focus on progressing on the following exercises, so getting stronger on these exercises over time, you should be able to get to where you want to be. And those exercises are the kneeling cable crunch, the captain's chair leg raise, the hanging leg raise, the air bicycle, the plank, and the ab wheel rollout. And the reason why I like these exercises is they allow you to safely train and overload all of your core muscles and they don't require much in the way of technical skill, flexibility, or athleticism. So they're simple, they work the muscles that we want to work, and they work. And one other little tip that I want to share is weighted ab work is fantastic if you need to develop your rectus abdominis in particular

and my favorite weighted ab exercise is the kneeling cable crunch now in terms of rep range i would say anywhere from 10 to 30 reps is fine and what i like to do personally is i will use a weight that allows me to get 12 to 15 reps. And I'll usually just work with that weight over time until I'm getting about 20 reps. And then I will bump the weight up. So I'm back down to the 10 or 12 range and work my way up that way. So that's progressive overload, of course, which is important when you're trying to develop muscles, even if they're smaller muscles, remember progressive overload. And in the case of exercises that are not weighted, like the hanging leg raise, for example, which you can wait by snatching a dumbbell in between your feet, but it's kind of

awkward. Normally you just don't do it with any weight. You progress by doing more reps. And when you build yourself a little ab routine, what I personally like to do is start with a weighted exercise. So like a kneeling cable crunch and then move directly to something that is unweighted. So like a captain's chair, leg raise, you know, directly into that and then finish with one more unweighted like air bicycles. And so then of course you're tracking your progress. And ideally over time, you're going to be going up in weight on the weighted exercise. So, you know, your kneeling cable crunch is going to get stronger and your reps are going

to slowly be going up on your unweighted exercises that you are following your weighted with. And that, of course, altogether is progressive overload. You are forcing your muscles to get stronger and adapting, which is going to show in the way of development. So that's it. That's really it. Those three steps. You do those three things and just be patient. It's going to take time and you can develop a great core period. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed

this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet then please leave a quick review of it on itunes or wherever you're listening from this not only convinces people that they should check the show out it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely

shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff

that I don't personally use and believe in, so instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural joint supplement Fortify. Now Fortify helps keep your joints healthy, functional, and pain-free by reducing joint inflammation and preventing cartilage loss. And its ingredients are scientifically proven to alleviate joint pain, inflammation, and swelling, and to help keep your cartilage healthy, strong, and intact. All of this is why Fortify has over 200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average, which I might add is fairly impressive for a joint supplement, and another 90 plus reviews on my website also with a four and a half star average so if you want healthy functional and pain-free joints that can withstand the demands of your

active lifestyle then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of fortify today and just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here.

Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.