The Truth About Six Pack Abs
Walking at an incline
Yes – seriously. Just regular ol’ walking – but at an incline.
Not power walking. Not anything approaching a jog.
Walking at a regular pace.
And at a mid-level incline. That’s it.
Why does this work? Because when you lock into the right incline, at the right speed, your hips/upper legs/calves mostly disengage – and the job of stabilizing your upper body and holding it upright gets placed squarely on your abs. Although this is still
indirect ab work, it’s about as
direct as you can get – and the results are stunning.
This is my big secret to developing truly defined, etched-out, and
flat/washboard abs.
There is a lot more to this, though, which I’ll come back to in a minute. This is actually one of my “secret weapon” exercises and isn’t as simple as it sounds. Once you’ve locked in properly, it’s unbelievably powerful – both for body fat reduction
and abdominal development – but without locking in properly, it’s next to worthless.
But take note of what I said above – body fat reduction. That brings me to the second, and far more important, principle of six pack development…
Here’s the strange discovery I stumbled on:
http://inclinecardio.com/?hop=65187905
So the house I lived in was on top of a hill. And the gym was at the bottom of the hill. Kind of like this:
And when it was workout time, I’d simply:
- Jog down the hill (5 minutes)
- Work out (30 minutes)
- Briskly walk back up the hill (15 minutes)
Simple enough, right?
But read that list again, because I just told you the “secret”. The
single switch that flipped me from “struggling for results” to “fat
incinerating” without any other changes.
This is going to seem weird…
But it was that 15 minute walk post-workout.
How do I know?
Because as soon as I started incorporating the same walk into my workouts back home, literally
exactly as I’d performed them abroad (doing my best to recreate every single aspect), those same results started right back up again!
My body started leaning out almost immediately, and the overall metabolic shift happened again over the next few weeks.
Jackpot!
That got me to experimenting…
Walking was too “easy”. There had to be a way to make this even more effective.
I tried replacing walking with other things. More intense things.
Running, jogging, sprinting, biking, stair steppers… but none of them
worked.
I spent months tracking and testing
everything… every variation possible.
Again… nothing.
I even tried modifying the walk. Changing my posture, changing the
intensity and speed, changing the duration, using different inclines,
using NO inclines…
Nothing. Nada. Didn’t work.
That post-workout uphill walk, literally
exactly as I had
coincidentally performed it abroad, was the only thing that reproduced
that elusive and addictive metabolic effect. I’d literally gotten lucky
and stumbled on it by accident.
So OK, for some reason that’s all that works. But this brought up an important observation…
I had no idea WHY it worked.
And maybe if I actually understood why it worked inside and out…
Then I could potentially enhance it.
And squeeze every ounce of effectiveness out of it. So…
I got to studying. Working from the ground up. Coming in with a “beginner’s mind”.
I didn’t want any of my preconceived notions to cloud my judgement.
This was so different and flew in the face of everything I had
learned that I knew the previous knowledge base I had was only going to
get in the way.
And
that ended up being the best idea I ever had.
Not only did I figure out why the walks worked and how to maximize
them, but I ended up with a completely altered big-picture view of how
fat loss
actually functions.
Let’s fast forward a few months now to exactly what I discovered about pure, accelerated fat loss:
I’ll simplify this for the sake of brevity.
Forget calories for a second. You know – “fat loss is just about
eating less calories than you burn in a day.” Forget that outdated
concept for right now.
You’ve been focusing on calories forever. And how far has it gotten
you? How many compliments, smiles, and wads of attention has it gotten
you? Or… how much FRUSTRATION has it gotten you when you wonder why
nothing’s working? Exactly. So it’s time to give it up and consider
something else entirely.
Fat loss, more than anything, is the product of
hormones.
Without going into too much detail, you have two basic sets of hormones in your body:
- Those that promote “healthy living” (fat
loss, muscle growth, normal metabolic functioning) and that you want to
maximize at almost all times. The more of these you have, the more
naturally and easily your body resists fat gain, promotes muscle growth,
and leaves you feeling healthy and lively.
- Those that combat stress in the short-term
(this is a good thing), but directly cancel out the “healthy living”
hormones when they do it and that wreak havoc when activated
unnecessarily (and too often or for too long).
And the formula is this simple:
Maximize the “healthy living” hormones while
minimizing the stress hormones and you have created the ultimate
metabolic environment for fat loss, lean muscle growth, and general
health & well-being.
So how do you maximize the healthy hormones?
It’s a three-step process (in this order):
Think of this like baking from a recipe.
- Diet is where you install into your body
the raw ingredients that these hormones are constructed from. They don’t
just come out of thin air – the right nutrients from healthy, whole
foods provide their basic building blocks. This is like gathering
together the right ingredients for your baked goods.
- Exercise is then like taking those
ingredients and carefully mixing them together just right, allowing each
to activate and undergo their ideal chemical reactions. You don’t just
throw the ingredients in the bowl willy-nilly – you’ve got to do it just
right and in the right way for your desired effect.
- And then rest/recovery is like sticking those ingredients into the oven and baking them.
Now, for our purposes, what I want to focus on right now is step 2…
Exercise.
(We’ll come back to the other two in a moment.)
Here’s how most people sabotage their results with exercise:
They either:
- Don’t do it in any way at all (because it’s too much work, too hard, too intense, don’t have enough time, etc), or…
- Do it in a way that activates the “bad”
stress hormones (and often lead to either fat gain rather than fat loss,
or heavily impaired results – since the “healthy” hormones are canceled
out in the process)
The second problem there is caused, simply, by too much exercise
(exercising for too long in any given session – like marathon sessions
on the elliptical or outside running) or working out too hard and/or too
often.
So even if you’re exercising well, you can easily sabotage nearly all
your efforts by overworking yourself just the tiniest bit… or simply
working yourself wrong.
Now here’s why that walk worked so well:
Three specific reasons, actually…
1. Didn’t overwork the body – but instead worked it exactly the way it liked.
Many people don’t realize this, but our bodies have adapted primarily to walking over the course of human history.
Sure, we can run or jump or jog, but that
doesn’t mean it’s what our bodies have adapted to best – or what shows
the best benefits for us.
This is the body’s preferred exercise stimulus – and science has shown a number of additional benefits directly linked specifically to plain ol’ regular walking, like:
- Increased neuron development in the brain
- Enhanced digestion
- And lots more
But specifically for our purposes – direct fat loss and healthy hormone production have been shown again and again and again to be directly linked to simple walking.
Listen, if running and jogging and
marathon elliptical sessions and stairsteppers provide you mental stress
relief, or you just plain ol’ like doing them, then great! More power
to you.
But they all have one problem in common:
The way they work the body is actually overwork and causes short-term spikes in stress hormones – rather than the increase in healthy hormones from simple walking.
Remember – it’s healthy hormones that we’re after before anything else for pure fat loss.
Get the idea of “insane intensity” out of your head for a little bit. It’s not always a good thing, depending on your goals. Sure you may lose weight
performing the super high-intensity stuff – but that weight may be
muscle, rather than pure fat, due to the hormonal imbalance they cause.
However, the incline walking I stumbled on has one distinct advantage over everything…
2. Hit a metabolic sweet spot.
For whatever reason…
- Performed at exactly the right times
- At exactly the right speeds
- For exactly the right duration of time
…walking at an incline specifically hits what I call the “Metabolic Sweet Spot”.
It’s almost like a loophole in the way the body burns fat.
I’d be lying if I said I understood 100%
how it worked, but I have control over it and know how to activate it –
and incline walking is the ONLY way I’ve found to do it.
As long as you’re walking at the RIGHT incline and the RIGHT speed.
This supercharges results and is like
tapping into a direct line of bodyfat, hooking a vacuum hose up to it,
and sucking it right out.
3. Released pockets of good hormones – like how mixing two
ingredients together just right causes them to react in a positive and
totally different way than usual.
And this is a result of both points above.
Because it’s so low-impact (and when
performed for exactly the right durations of time), it doesn’t cause
spikes in stress hormones. And because our bodies are so well-adapted to
walking, it’s the perfect medium for “mixing” your hormonal ingredients
together.
This leads to a profound spike in healthy hormone release.
The best part? It’s so low-impact on the
body that it can be performed every single day of the week if you please
– and often two times every day, if you’ve got the time, for heavily
accelerated results.
And this will actually enhance results, by creating a hormonal snowball effect.
Make sense? Cool. But there’s still one more hidden benefit.
The unexpected bonus benefit I stumbled on:
Remember earlier when I mentioned that, when I first stumbled on
this, I ended up getting completely defined, flat six pack abs as well?
I want to touch on that for a second.
Most people think the only way to build a flat stomach (or six pack
abs if you’re a guy) is to do endless sit-ups and crunches and planks
and other direct ab exercises.
But the truth is that your abs develop best as a
stabilizer muscle.
That means not working them out directly, but rather allowing them to
get worked indirectly by holding you upright during other exercise.
That’s how they prefer to be worked, and they react
fast to it – when done right.
Now, when you walk at exactly the right incline, something amazing happens:
Your abs take over the majority of the movement in order to hold your torso upright.
Which means that, while you’re burning off fat, you’re
also developing your abs.
This particular stimulus is especially intriguing because, the ideal
way it works your core, you end up with completely flat abs – not a
“bulky” stomach.
The results are stunning.
People-asking-you-”what-is-yo
ur-secret?” stunning.
And that’s why the incline walking method I’d stumbled on produces such profound and dramatic results:
- It directly promotes healthy hormone release
- While providing a direct line to pure fat incineration
- And hitting the abs exactly the way they prefer to be hit in the process
But nothing’s perfect and I’m
not going to act like this method is either. There’s one big problem
with it I haven’t covered with you yet.
By now you’ve likely had that lightbulb “ah-ha!” moment I was talking
about – where things are making a bit more sense. You now understand
why fat loss hasn’t been as straight-forward as most of the “experts”
make it seem… but understand that the fix is extremely easy.
The incline walking technique I’m describing is a pivotal part of that.
And trust me, when you start seeing the fat melting off, and your
friends and family start finally commenting and complimenting in a
sincere
way (and you can really see the shock and even jealousy registering on
their faces), and your metabolism and body composition shift
dramatically…
There’s just no better feeling. And it’s so easy to finally feel when
you work with the body the way it wants to be worked with –
with no extra wasted energy.
If you can simply walk without issue, no matter your age or fitness
level, then you can get the full benefit from this technique.
There’s nothing simpler or more powerful that I’ve found.
