Flatten Your Abs

Here's Part 1 of a 4 Part interview with Nick Nilsson on how to flatten your abs, lose fat, and gain muscle. Nick is a personal trainer that brings unique exercises to the mix to freshen up your workouts while increasing your results.

Take it from me, Nick knows what he is talking about...just check out the secrets below on flattening your abs.

CB: Nick, your unique abdominal exercise e-book, "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" is excellent. I look forward to using some of those in my workouts. How do you come up with this stuff?

NN: Glad you like the book!

There are definitely some exercises in there that have never been seen before. I come up with exercises in a variety of ways. Sometimes, I take an exercise I already know (like the crunch, for instance) and I try and think of other variations and unique ways of doing it either through angles, body position or adding resistance. Sometimes, I will actually be doing a completely unrelated exercise for another bodypart and notice that I feel it in my abs a little. Then I'll take that feeling and run with it, trying to maximize the effect on the abs.

I've come with quite a few like that - the bench press crunch and curl squat are two prime examples. These use almost the same form and setup as their counterpart exercises but with unique modifications to throw the majority of tension on the abs. I don't think I've found an overall tougher ab exercise than the curl squat, let me tell you, but it builds incredible core strength faster than any other exercise I've ever used. And still other times, the inspiration just comes out of nowhere and I have to check to make sure I've taken my medication

CB: Yeah, we all need our meds. So what are your top 3 keys to getting abs?

NN:
The top 3 keys are:

1. Fat loss - this is an easy one. You can develop the abs all you want and you may notice your midsection to be somewhat tighter but without losing the fat that covers the abs, you'll never know what great shape they're in!

2. Don't be afraid of low reps, tough exercises and using resistance - doing hundreds of crunches every day won't get you fast results. Usually, it won't get you ANY results! The abs respond best to lower reps and resistance. They thrive on it because they're designed for it! High reps don't build true core strength and definitely don't maximize ab development - that's done with resistance and tough exercises.

One of the most frequent comments I get when I mention that type of training is "won't the heavy resistance thicken your waist?" The answer is "no." Using myself as an example, I train my abs with very heavy resistance and with low reps and, at a bodyweight of 200 lbs, I have a 31" waist. Use resistance!

3. Rotational movement will flatten your abs, not hundreds of crunches - one of the biggest secrets that I've found with flattening the abs is that you need to work the deep muscles of the abs that wrap AROUND the midsection. The frontal, six-pack abs (the rectus abdominus) look great but they don't flatten anything. Think of it this way...if you had an elastic tenser bandage (a.k.a. ACE bandage) and you wanted to wrap it so that your waist was smaller, you wouldn't throw it over your shoulders and in between your legs...you'd cinch it up AROUND your waist. THAT is what the deep muscles like the transversus and obliques do, not the six-pack area.

CB: Thanks Nick.

That's all for today, but Nick and I covered a huge range of fat loss and muscle-building topics, and I'll bring you more of that interview later this week.

In the meantime, click here to pick up your copy of Nick's e-book and start using some new ab-chiseling exercises today.

Here's to flatter abs,

CB

P.S. Nick has 77 ab exercises in his e-book...

That should keep your ab training fresh for a long, long time.

Click here to pick up your copy of Nick's e-book, "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of"