The largest obstacle in the pursuit of flat abs in not the physical act of dragging yourself to the gym, but the psychological determination required to simply show up day after day. Once we make it to the gym it isn’t tough to pull some kind of workout off, even on a bad day. But as soon as we start making excuses and postponing workouts the stage is set for weight loss failure. 

It is absolutely imperative that our flat abs workout plans don’t ignore or diminish the fact that we don’t particularly like working out, and that those feelings are not about to change. The first few weeks we all make it to the gym and give it our all. But after that short time we begin to notice that there are no immediate results, and we get frustrated. When we get frustrated, we start to sabotage our efforts by making excuses or looking at training sessions as a burden to an already tight schedule.

At this point you need to reassess your goals and motivations. You see, good weight losers don’t assume that they’re going to fall in love with training. They make their flat abs workout plans assuming they’re going to get tired of training and that training is uncomfortable. When you assume the worst, you’ll be able to create an intelligent plan for dealing with your own conditioned laziness.

And that plan needs to bear the mark of successful weight losers. Successful weight losers don’t squeeze workouts in, they build their schedules around workouts. Successful weight losers don’t make excuses or postpone sessions, they show up every session, regardless of their condition that day. These two factors are the keys to long term weight loss. If your flat abs workout plans can incorporate these two factors, you’ll be a success.

Let’s look at each one a little more closely. One of the worst habits a person can have is to squeeze in a workout at the end of a long day. You’re tired. You’re frustrated. All you want to do is relax. You are never going to make sustainable gains if you have to fight your natural feelings. You need to alter your schedule to account for these states of being, and put your training first. Train when you are fresh. Train first thing in the morning before you can second guess your sessions or make excuses.

It doesn’t need to be a monster session; it just needs to be consistent. Wake up 20 minutes earlier and go for a 15 minute jog or push yourself through a short and intense bodyweight circuit of push-ups, squats and sit-ups. This will give you a nice metabolic boost, and it will get you in the habit of putting your health first. If you have the time or energy later in the day then hit the gym for a longer session, but hey, if you can’t make it, then no worries, you’ve already completed your essential training. You can approach the day without the guilt or pressure of training at other times.

The second factor is the simple act of showing up for the game. You don’t need to play every time, but you need to show up. If you are legitimately hurt or sick, then don’t train. But don’t sit at home and watch TV during the time you’ve allotted to train. Go to the gym or get your running shorts on and either sit there and watch others train or do something very very light with a part of your body that isn’t injured or stretch for a while. This will condition your mind to keep this time for training and thoughts of backing out won’t become habitual.

Keep these two factors in mind:
1. Train first and train fresh
2. Show up every session, regardless of your condition

If your flat abs workout plans include these two components, you will succeed in the long run. Adding extra sessions later in the day to your short early morning sessions will only speed up your progress, but they needn’t be the stressful and guilty burden that causes so many flat abs strivers to fail. Good training and even better thinking to you!

This abs workout will build off of our previous discussion on The Best Abdominal Exercises for Flat Abs. This post will focus on more advanced abdominal training for those people who have reached their flat abs goals and are looking for a rippling six pack. If you’re still striving to reduce belly fat then start with the previous post before applying what follows.

So let’s assume your abs have flattened a bit and the love handles are shrinking, but you have yet to bring out definition or tone. For most people the combination of interval and resistance training with a proper diet is more than enough to shred the abs. But there are a few of us that for whatever reason plateau once we near that elusive goal. So our workout plans need to adapt just as our bodies have in order to hit our abs with more intensity.

Let’s look quickly at the body of a sprinter versus the body of a marathon runner. Until recently (cross training is much more prominent these days) marathon runners tended to be slender, carry little muscle, and lack the detailed muscle tone we see in sprinters. And this had everything to do with the type of training. Sprinting requires and develops fast twitch muscle fibers, whereas jogging develops primarily slow twitch. This results in muscular hypertrophy in sprinters which builds their bodies and shows greater definition. This is what we are looking for.

Marathon runners by comparison, despite the fact that they run for hours on end and have lean midsections, rarely show the rippling six packs of sprinters. There are two reasons for this. The first, as I’ve just said is due to the fact that sprinting is a sport requiring fast twitch muscle fiber development resulting in larger muscles. The second reason is that sprinting stresses our nervous systems and muscles to a much larger degree, forcing the release of human growth hormone and other powerful fat burning and muscle building hormones. Jogging for long periods of time on the other hand can cause our bodies to release cortisol, a stress hormone which tells our bodies to store fat.

So if you’ve reached the point of flat abs, jogging and long cardio sessions may actually be detrimental to your progress. It’s important to recognize this peculiar hormonal response and utilize contrary training techniques in our ab workouts. We’ll need to stick to short and intense training sessions rather than longer cardio sessions, and we’ll need to concentrate a little more on exercises which stress our cores.

In my own training I reduce my abs workout (assuming, like I’ve said I’ve already reduced my belly fat and have just to bring out definition) to short intense abdominal exercises followed by short and intense interval training or sprinting. The abs exercises pre-exhaust my core before I sprint, and then running forces my core into overdrive to keep me stable while running. It also works supporting muscles that are hard to reach with normal abdominal exercises.

My preferred exercises at this level of training are those which draw more power from the lower abs through lifting the legs rather than those which concentrate on the upper abs through crunches. I do reclining leg raises on a decline bench or hanging (from pull-up bar) leg raises, for 3 to 4 sets of 10. You will not normally feel like you’ve exhausted your abs because these kinds of exercises rarely generate lactic acid to the same degree as a set of 20 crunches, but lactic acid is not an indication of muscular stimulation.

You’ll notice your work as soon as you step on the treadmill for your sprint session, and then days letter once your midsection has firmed. Once on the treadmill, warm up for 5 minutes with a moderate jog, and then either transition into the interval training I’ve outlined in Why Interval Training Needs to be a Part of Your Flat Abs Workout Plans or simply resolve yourself to 3 to 5 one minute sprints. By the end of the minute you should be close to failure, and you can rest 2 to 3 minutes between sprints by walking at a decent pace.

If added to your flat abs workout plans this abs workout done once or twice a week will turn your flat abs into rippling ones. It’s important to remember however that too much exercise is just as bad as too little. Your abs need time to recover and grow stronger, and any abs workout that is done intensely, should be done infrequently, once or twice a week max. A less intense abs workout can be performed three or four days a week, but in my opinion is less effective.

We’ve looked at flat abs workout plans already with little attention to diet. But no amount of effort in the gym is going to pay off if we refuse to alter our eating habits. The energy we put in our bodies is just as important, if not more so, than the energy we exert.

In keeping with the 80-20 rule, the most meaningful shift in our diets will come from controlling our intake of high glycemic carbohydrates and avoiding trans and hydrogenated fats. These carbs are easily recognizable because they taste great and are white. They include pastas, white breads, cookies, white rice, and potatoes, etc. We love eating these foods because the simple sugars that comprise them give us an immediate insulin surge and energy boost, which hours later results in an energy crash. Insulin tells our bodies to retain body fat.

The good carbs are known to all and come in the form of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. These carbs take our bodies longer to break down and release energy at a slower pace, allowing our bodies to draw from fat stores for energy rather than flooding our bodies with the high concentration of energy and simple sugars from breads and pastas. You can change your diet to consist of mainly fruits, veggies, and lean meats, eat as much and as often as you want, and still find your body shedding weight and nearing your flat abs goals.

The quality of food we put in our bodies is so much more meaningful than the quantity. You can feel like you’re starving yourself, but if you’re eating the wrong kinds of food when you do it, your body will store it as fat. On the other hand, when eating a healthy diet of natural foods you can eat more and more often and still burn fat. The main reason being that fruits and vegetables, while rich in vitamins and minerals, are not calorie dense. It’s very hard to meet your caloric needs from a diet of only vegetables, and when you don’t consume adequate calories to meet your metabolic needs, your body will take the energy deficit from the only place it can…your body fat.

Flat abs is the inevitable outcome of returning to a natural food diet. Our bodies have evolved over millennia on food from the land, not processed foods with added sugars and flavors. Returning to a natural diet puts our hormones in balance and allows our bodies to function as they’re meant to…efficiently.

Protein is the last macronutrient we have yet to discuss, but its rarely an issue for those living in western and developed countries. Meats are commonplace and easy to come by, and as long as you try to consume some two to three meals a day you’ll be fine. Notice here I’m not discussing macronutrient quantity per meal. I’m doing that intentionally because I honestly believe it’s insignificant. When eating natural foods our bodies don’t need the caloric precision they need when we eat garbage because our hormonal response to healthy eating is a properly functioning and efficient body. It isn’t as sensitive to calorie fluctuations and in fact benefits from them.

This brings me to my last dietary recommendation, calorie shifting. This is where I give you a break. I know for most that a diet of natural foods sounds bland. But it doesn’t need to be. You can have a pretty diverse selection of great tasting and healthy foods if you dive in and make the lifestyle change. But nevertheless it may not serve to replace the psychological comfort of junk food. So here’s the catch, when you make the dietary changes above and are realizing gains in your flat abs battle, you can introduce a tactic known as calorie shifting.

A common problem with dieting is that in the beginning our bodies make up the caloric deficiency with body fat. But after some time our metabolism will acclimate to our new level of calorie consumption and downregulate. This means our metabolism will become lower to account for lower calories consumed. This is not good, as it means you’ll stop burning fat for energy. Most people come to the conclusion that they need to reduce there diet further and head down that path of starvation and long term metabolic destruction. What can we do about this? We can eat!! One day a week you can binge on absolutely anything.

Feel free to go out of your way to eat everything you love, ice cream, chips, chocolate, fudge, snickers. And don’t eat just some, eat till you feel sick. This has two great benefits. The first is it keeps our metabolism high by forcing it to deal with a massive surge of calories. This will allow you to burn fat consistently for months on end because when you hit your diet again the following six days your reduction in calories will be registered as a caloric deficit do to your consistently high metabolism. This deficit will continue to be met by burning belly fat for energy.

The second benefit is psychological. It’s hard to diet for the long term. Our minds crave those foods that make us feel guilty. Allowing ourselves that one day a week to binge is great for our mental health in that we don’t feel like we’re being deprived or sacrificing simple pleasures. It also makes us feel a little sick to our stomachs, and that will make it hard to think about or even look at comfort foods for days following the binge, removing all temptation of a little taste of chocolate. Who knew that binging would become your secret dietary weapon in the battle for flat abs.