From Ideal Weight To A Six Pack

You really have no business struggling with sit-ups and talking about a six-pack if you’re 30 pounds overweight. Getting a six-pack requires you to first be at your ideal weight.

From there, you’ll lower your body fat percentage till you reach the single digits. In bodybuilding, they call it being vascular. Men will see their six-pack once they’re at 6 to 9 percent body fat. Women will see it when they’re at 16 to 19 percent body fat.

So how do you get there?

Calories

As an online marketer, you are likely so busy that you cannot leave the gym for hours. The truth is, you don’t have to. All you have to do is have your body burn fat.

You must monitor your calories very closely. You can see the calculation below.

• To see a 2-pack — (Bodyweight in pounds X 13) calories
• To see a 4-pack — (Bodyweight in pounds X 12) calories
• To see a 6-pack — (Bodyweight in pounds X 11) calories

Basically, you’re taking your weight in pounds and multiplying it by the numbers shown. So, if you weigh 160 pounds, you should be consuming no more than 2,080 calories a day till you see your 2-pack, which is your top 2 abs muscles. Then drop your calorie intake to your current weight multiplied by 11.

Make sure you go progressively. Do not start off with your bodyweight and multiply it by 10 just so you can get your six pack faster. You’ll just end up hitting a plateau and see no progress.

Training

Now that the calorie section is set, you want to make sure that most of your workouts are done at maximum intensity.

You must be gasping and struggling as you workout. Nothing but your very best! This will create a situation known as EPOC — excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

Once you reach this stage, your body will be in fat burning mode for 10 to 14 hours after your workout. The fat will just melt off. Do full-body workouts that include exercises such as:

• Deadlifts
• Pull-ups
• Lunges
• Squats
• Snatches
• Mountain climbers
• Burpees
• Bench presses
• Hanging leg raises

These are compound movements. It’s a great idea to use weights. Unlike earlier when you were just trying to shed the excess pounds, now you’re trying to burn the last and most stubborn layer of fat.

You only need to do about 20 to 30 minutes. There’s no need for 45-minute or 60-minute workouts. Short fast workouts are what matters.

Always lift as much weight as you can fast and with good form. If your form is wobbly or you’re slow, the weights are too heavy. Use lighter weights that are manageable but still challenging.

Diet

By now, you should have instilled some discipline in your eating. Here’s an important point to note. When trying to shed excess fat, as long as you’re at a caloric deficit, you’ll lose weight.

What you eat is important, but it has little effect. You may secretly eat unhealthy foods from time to time and lose weight until you are consuming fewer calories than you are eating.

To get six pack abs, your diet will be a lot less forgiving. Not all calories are made equal. You’ll need to clean up your diet as much as you can.

A bar of chocolate that has 200 calories is a lot more detrimental than a slice of steak that is also 200 calories. While the numbers are the same, the chocolate will cause your blood sugar levels to spike.

Your body will release insulin which will lead to weight gain… or at the very least, it will be much more difficult to burn off the last stubborn layer of fat on your lower abdomen that really doesn’t want to leave.

Avoid processed foods and dairy products as much as possible. Stick to single-ingredient foods like broccoli, chicken breasts, etc. Your body can only consume so many calories and each calorie needs to be counted.

Most of your calories should be included in protein and fat. This diet is known as the keto diet. You have to eat fat to lose fat. Add virgin olive oil or cold-pressed coconut oil when cooking.

As long as you have enough fat and protein in your diet and around 50 grams of carbohydrates a day, you can have six packs in 4 to 7 weeks. To speed things up, add intermittent fasting to your schedule and allow yourself 5 or 6 hours to eat.

Another thing to know is that for every gram of carbohydrate you eat, your body is storing 3 grams of water. So if you eat more carbohydrates in one day, you will gain weight the next day due to water retention.

You can solve this problem by drinking plenty of water that day to get rid of excess water. The same is true when you eat foods rich in salt. It seems paradoxical that you should drink more water to reduce water retention. But that’s it.

That’s really all there is to it. You do not need to spend countless hours at the gym or do thousands of sit-ups. 3 to 4 short but intense workouts a week is more than enough to get your six pack.

Building Muscle and Gaining Mass

In general, it is best to get yourself a six pack before attempting to grow bigger. While a six pack requires a lack of calories, building muscle and gaining weight will require extra calories.

As an online marketer, you probably don’t have the time to dedicate to working out one body part a day. So, you need a split.

Once again, the goal is 3 workouts a week — about 30 to 40 minutes each. You really do not need to go above that. You can if you want to, but it isn’t necessary. Let’s look at an example of a 3-day split.

• Monday — Legs/calves
• Tuesday — Rest
• Wednesday — Chest/shoulders/triceps
• Thursday — Rest
• Friday — Back/biceps/forearms

That’s an excellent split and it’s manageable. There are so many different exercises to target each muscle. It would be best to do research and vary your workouts.

In general, these are the most important and effective exercises. If you just do these exercises you should be fine.

• Legs — Barbell squats, calf raises, dumbbell lunges
• Biceps — Hammer curls, EZ bar curls, incline hammer curls, bicep curls
• Triceps — Skullcrushers, push-ups, triceps pushdowns, close grip bench press
• Chest — Barbell bench press, incline bench press, dips, incline dumbbell flyes
• Forearms — Seated wrist curls, wrist rollers, farmer’s walk
• Back — Deadlifts, wide grip pull-ups, single arm dumbbell rows, snatches
• Shoulders — Front/side/rear lateral raises, Arnold press

How many reps and sets?

All you need to do is 8 to 12 reps per exercise for 4 to 5 sets. Lift as much weight as you can to barely make these reps. You want to be challenging yourself.

You do not always need to train to failure. Training to failure is a strategy that should be employed once every 3 workouts.

Training to failure means that on your last set of each exercise, you keep doing reps until a point where you just can’t do another one more rep. Your muscles will be burning and all good form goes out the window.

This will cause micro-tears in your muscles and when the scars heal, there’ll be more muscle tissue. Do note that you should take a 1 week break every 8 weeks. Do not exercise during this entire week. Let your body heal.

As far as nutrition goes, you should multiply your bodyweight in pounds by 20 to know how many calories you should be consuming. It’s a good idea to get most of your calories from clean food that is nutritious.

But sometimes, that can be difficult and tiring. It’s perfectly fine to eat some junk food to meet the calorie count. This is known as a ‘dirty bulk.’

Will you gain weight? Yes… but you’ll also gain muscle. Do not worry too much about gaining fat. You can do a ‘cut’ later where you burn off the excess fat. You already know what you need to know to lose weight.

Ideally, you should bulk for 2 or 3 months and then do a cut where you go on a caloric deficit and burn fat. Keep your diet clean during this period and do not do more than 2 or 3 high intensity workouts a week… and keep them within the 15 to 20 minute duration.

You just want to boost your metabolism so that your body goes into fat burning mode. As long as your diet is on point and clean, you’ll shed the excess pounds but now you’ll have more muscle mass.

Do not let yourself get too overweight before you decide to do a cut. Monitor your weight closely.

Some men find it extremely hard to bulk up. These are usually ectomorph body types with a high metabolic rate. If you face this issue, you’ll need to aim for a 1,000 to 2,000 calorie a day surplus over and above the number you calculated earlier.

You’ll feel sick of eating but it’s a necessary evil. All cardio training should be limited to just walking for about 20 minutes twice or thrice a week. Never workout more than thrice a week.

You can even workout twice a week and it may yield better results. Less is more, and while it seems counterintuitive, this is what an ectomorph needs to do.

As with all things, consistency is the most important thing. Since it’s just 3 times a week and the workouts are about 30 minutes long, it’s definitely manageable.

How much muscle can I hope to gain?

According to Lyle Macdonald’s Natural Lean Muscle Mass Gain Model… this is what you can expect. It’s a pretty accurate guide.

• Year 1–20–25 pounds (2 pounds per month)
• Year 2–10–12 pounds (1 pound per month)
• Year 3–5–6 pounds (.5 pound per month)
• Year 4 and on — 2–3 pounds (not worth calculating)

As you can see, it takes time to build muscle and as the years pass, it gets more difficult. So, tailor your expectations accordingly and stay the course. Consistency is the key. If you can’t be consistent, you can’t be anything.

Before you start with weights…

Here’s something that most gym trainers will not tell you. Before you even sign up for a gym membership or start training with weights, make sure you put yourself through about 8 weeks of solid bodyweight training.

There are so many beginners who do bicep curls and hammer curls at the gym… but they can’t do a single pull-up. Ask them to do 30 push-ups at a go and they struggle.

Build a strong foundation by doing as much bodyweight training as you can. Your muscles and ligaments will get used to resistance training… and you’ll be amazed to discover that even guys who are built like a house, struggle with bodyweight exercises such as the V-sit, muscle up, human flag, archer pushups, etc.

Go on YouTube and find as many different bodyweight exercises that you can and do them till you are good at them and much stronger. Now you have a solid foundation in resistance training… you’re ready for weights at the gym.

Don’t neglect your posture and flexibility

Make sure you stretch often and always maintain good posture. As a marketer who spends hours in front of the computer, do make sure you stretch your neck, shoulders, back and do head rotations.

This will prevent chronic issues from arising. Get up off your seat for 5 minutes every hours and do some stretches. This is very important. If you can, practice yoga and Pilates. This will be very beneficial in the long run.

Resistance training will make your muscles tighter. There will be a loss of range of motion. To solve this problem, do some light stretching daily.