Almost everyone admits they want six pack abs–the rest are lying. Guys like them on girls and girls like them on guys. It is totally win-win. The usual and recommended exercise for abs is the crunch or the sit-up. Those aren’t bad exercises to build abdominal muscles but, they are not the best single exercise for developing a six pack. That honor belongs to the plank.

The plank is performed by getting into push up position with your forearms are on the floor. You then tighten your mid-section as if someone was about to punch you in the gut and hold it for 30 seconds. That is one rep. You’ll need to keep your body straight the entire time as well–much like a push-up.

You can also do a side plank which is ideologically the same. The difference is you are lying on your side with your upper body propped up by your left or right elbow and forearm. You then raise your hips until your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to ankles. Now you tighten your abs for 30 seconds and repeat until you’ve completed a set.

If you’ve never done planks before than this might sound easy. In fact, you might think it is a big waste of time. Let me convince you of its benefits and if I can’t, you should still give it a try.

Crunches and sit-ups are very limited abdominal exercises and work a proportionally smaller amount of core muscles than the plank. We use our cores to stabilize our spine, rotate our torso, flex our hips, and more. There is almost no activity you can do that doesn’t require your core to step in and do some of the work. The plank works a lot more muscles in and around your core than the crunch or the sit-up.

It is difficult to target all your six-pack muscles doing crunches because crunches predominantly work the upper abs. The plank will work the entire thing. Some people report that sit-ups create discomforts in their backs and a lot of people who do crunches are really just furiously nodding their heads. It is more difficult to do the plank wrong and cause back discomfort or waste time in a head nodding frenzy.

The plank is the single best exercise for targeting your mid-section. However, the key to a six-pack is body fat and not how long you can hold a plank or how many crunches you can do. It is entirely possible to never do a single ab exercise and come out with a six-pack by reducing your body fat percentage. Generally speaking, you’ll need a body fat percentage in the 10 percent range or below but, it varies by person.

Dropping body fat is going to take more time than the several minutes it takes to do crunches or planks. You can use these tips as a starting point. The best way to get those abs is to work your body’s biggest muscles so that you increase your resting metabolic rate which will help you burn fat faster. Eating well is also important and there is no diet easier than this one. A wise fitness guru once said, “six packs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym”.

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The idea of doing 100 push-ups in 100 seconds came to me one day out of the blue. I have never tried doing it simply because such an idea had never crossed my mind. The idea of doing timed push-ups is certainly nothing new in the world. My first experience in doing exercises competitively was in high school. I took a lot of co-ed advanced weight training and one of the teachers liked to do competitions in push-ups, pull-ups, dips, max bench press, etc.

The only event that was timed was the push-ups. No one was really able to do as many pull-ups or dips as they did push-ups. In a pull-up or dip, you are generally moving almost your entire body weight while a push-up only involves about 60% of your body weight.

I never did win a push-up competition in those high school gym class days–I blame my counter. I did win a dip competition but, not because I did an insane amount of dips. Everyone else was just fairly weaker in that department. I won with about 25 - 30 dips–not that impressive.

The greatest number of push-ups I have ever done was 104–I counted 105 in my head but upon video review it was only 104. It took a lot more than 100 secs and the form could have been better at some points. After coming up with this 100 push-ups in 100 seconds challenge, I sent a text message to my closest workout buddy to see what he thought. He thought it was possible. So maybe this idea is more than just an impressive sounding marketing line.

I haven’t been doing push-ups as much as I used to. I used to be able to easily drop and punch out 50 in the past but now, I’m pretty sure I can’t just do that at will. I started training to accomplish this challenge a few weeks ago. My most recent test runs shows that I can do 50 push-ups in under 60 seconds. There is still quite some work to be done to reach 100 in 100.

So far my training has consisted of doing push-ups using a Door Gym–it’s a product that allows you to do pull-ups on a door frame. It provides elevation for my push-ups so I can increase the range of motion and work more muscles. I don’t do these push-ups fast. I have been trying to build strength and endurance so that I could do 100 push-ups for a whole 1 minute and 40 seconds at a constant pace.

In order to build strength and endurance with these push-ups, I pause for 2 seconds at the bottom of the push-up and 2 seconds at the top of the push-up without locking my elbows. It was fairly hard to do just 10 of these at first but, I can do 20 of them now. I have switched to elevating my feet above the floor to increase the difficulty.

I also do chin-ups with the same 2 second pause technique as part of this training. It might seem completely unrelated to do a back exercise but, a strong back will help keep your form when doing push-ups. I also want to make sure I keep things even so I do a back exercise as well.

The last thing I do are plyometric push-ups. I’m trying to build explosive power with these so that I can make sure each push-up will only take 1 second to finish on average because that is all the time I have. Plyometric push-ups are ones where your hands come off the floor because you pushed up with such explosive force.

I have not officially set a deadline for when I want this accomplished. Unless I set a date, this is all meaningless and will probably never get done because I have forever to accomplish it. As I am writing this, I decided that November 1st, 2008 is as good a date as any other–today is the 5th of September. I am not yet half way to the goal and there is less than 2 months until the deadline.

I will continue to report on the results. Assuming I can actually accomplish this, I will provide a video showing it. Otherwise, how will anyone know that I’m not just talking out of my ass? :)

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Sometimes you just don’t have access to a gym. Usually, this is when our brains gives us an overwhelming reason to skip a workout. After all, we don’t have access to the equipment we need. I’m going to help you neutralize that excuse with this total body workout that only uses your own body weight.

A lot of guys believe you can’t build serious muscle without going to the gym. This is obviously not true unless you are a modern day bodybuilder. Humans have built hard bodies since ancient times without all the equipment that we have today. Your body weight is more than enough to allow you to pack on some serious muscle. You just need to understand the physics of using your body weight to its maximum potential.

With body weight exercises, you can’t increase the resistance unless you gain weight or are able to adjust gravity. However, you can still make your muscles do more work by increasing the distance it has to move. For example, a regular push-up ends at the floor. You can only go as low as the floor. To increase the distance in this case you can just start higher by putting books or some other object under your hands. Now the floor is further away and you can go lower.

The less contact you have with the floor, the more work your muscles need to do to stay balanced. In a push-up, we have four points of contact with the floor–our hands and feet. To reduce our contact with the floor we can just lift a leg or do one-handed push-ups.

Another simple way to add complexity to a simple workout is to add a twist. Most exercises are done in a single plane meaning we move in one direction. Throw a twist into any exercise and you’ll work more muscles.

Body weight exercises can be just as challenging as weighted exercises. I certainly recommend alternating between the two disciplines. Using your body weight to improve your body has the wonderful advantage of keeping muscles in balance. It also ensures that you’ve built a body that is completely functional. Still, there is nothing better than free weights when it comes to putting on pure muscle.

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I am in favor of going to the gym a few days a week for about an hour each session. I’m not a bodybuilder in training or a professional athlete so why mimic their schedules? A lot of people like to split up their workouts into body parts or groups. I prefer doing a total body workout that lasts about an hour three times a week at most. There are times when I’m starting a new routine where I have to take longer than an hour and that’s fine but certainly no more than 90 minutes.

I’ve tried splitting my workouts into body parts–I never liked it. With a split body part plan, you usually only workout each body part or group once a week. With a total body plan, I hit every muscle three times a week and I do it in half the time. It looks to me that three total body workouts ends up being better than one body part a day.

Working more muscles also leads to more hormones being released which helps your muscles grow even faster. Bodybuilders naturally scoff at this idea and if you asked them for advice, you will more than likely get pointed in the direction of split body parts. Even for bodybuilders, I always encourage them to look into High Intensity Training which advocates less work for better results.

Trying to fit a total body workout into an hour is no easy task. My personal strategy is to have two different routines that I alternate. Each routine is similar in their goals–total body–but, employ different exercises to work some muscles more than others. This keeps things fresh and makes it more difficult for my body to adapt so it will grow even faster.

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If you only had time to do three exercises, what would they be? My natural response would be to hit as many muscles as possible. Right off the top of my head I would pick deadlift, squat, and bent-over row. With those three moves I would have worked the biggest muscles and since they are all compound moves, I would have also worked a lot of muscles.

As much as I like my picks, Men’s Health’s Muscle Guy, Mike Mejia M.S., C.S.C.S chose three different exercises. The idea is pretty much the same but, his moves have a stability factor. I’m all about training your small stabilizer muscles because they are so often ignored. Mike picked the squat and press, swiss ball push-up, and inverted row.

There is a special place in my heart for those three exercises. The squat and press is amongst my favorite compound moves with a pair of dumbbells–add a torso twist in there and it gets even better. The swiss ball push-up is great because it forces you to use a whole bunch of muscles you didn’t even know existed to stabilize yourself. If you’ve never done a push-up on a swiss ball, it’ll take some time to get used to it. It also isn’t easy. The inverted row is one of those exercises that I see few people ever do. It is a great move for your back and all it uses is your own body weight.

There are probably a ton of three exercise groups you can create depending on your objective. The idea behind my picks is to hit the biggest muscles and as many muscles as possible to allow your body to release the most amount of hormones into your body for maximum muscle growth. If I can only do three exercises, I’m going to make sure they accomplish as much as possible.

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The first question out of most guy’s mouths when we discuss working out is “how much do you bench?” A kid asked me that question recently so this epidemic is not just limited to adult males. I admit that I am guilty of bench press love at times–pushing heavy weights on the bench makes me feel strong. Because of this fascination with the bench press, a lot of guys have an upper body imbalance. This imbalance manifests itself in the form of “rounded shoulders” or it makes your shoulders more injury prone.

There are levels of severity to the imbalance. I’ve seen guys at the gym who have a very visible imbalance. Their posture looks off and you can tell that is not what fit human body is supposed to look like regardless of how much you can bench. My upper body imbalance was never too severe–being an avid reader of Men’s Health helps a lot. Ever since I discovered this problem, I’ve made sure to work my back harder than my chest. I also recommend putting back exercises before chest exercises in your routine–back muscles are bigger anyway.

There are mathematical ways to measure if you have a back/chest imbalance with rulers and lines and other semi-complicated things. Here is a way to figure out if you have an imbalance by comparing exercises. You should be able to chin as much as you can bench. Unless you want to strap a bunch of weight to yourself and find out your max chin, you can do as many chin ups as you can and then see if you can bench your body weight the same number of times. If all is equal or fairly close, you are probably okay. If your chest is significantly stronger, get cracking on improving your back.

Lucky for your back and shoulders, it is amongst the least favorite places for fat to hang out so getting them defined is a lot easier than getting your abs defined. Every guy wants the coveted V-shaped torso and women love it. The best way to get your body into balance and improve your shoulder strength is to put as many total body compound exercises into your routine as possible. My favorite one of them all is the deadlift. The more muscles you activate during a workout, the more growth hormones your body releases. This will help every muscle in your body grow faster.

Rows are also fantastic for building your back–bent over row, single arm row, etc. I’m not the biggest fan of shrugs but, they’ll work your traps. Shoulder presses with a barbell or individual dumbbells are good. You can end all your workouts with a few sets of chin-ups. Instead of doing them quickly, count and hold for two seconds at the bottom and top of each chin-up. It’ll be a lot harder and you’ll get a much better workout. If you are a bit weak in chin-ups, try the reverse pyramid technique that I mentioned a while ago.

Don’t ignore your back. It’s awesome!

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Lift heavy and fast? Theoretically, it is impossible. Your body takes more time to gather the resources required to move a heavy weight than it does a light weight. However, if you were able to lift a heavy weight fast, you would theoretically get phenomenal results in the shortest amount of time.

Since you can’t really lift heavy and fast, we’ll have to use a trick that is almost the same. The benefits is not something to ignore. This article talks about this particular trick and a handful of others. The idea behind lifting heavy and fast is to lift heavy and then immediately lift fast. This is actually very similar to the concept of drop sets except you aren’t aiming to lift to failure and then going to a lower weight.

To use the heavy and fast trick, you’ll want to use a weight that you can lift about 5 times without going to failure. Immediately after the 5 reps, you will do an explosive exercise targeting the same muscle. If you started with a bench press, you could follow with plyo-pushups or some other weight that will allow you to lift fast.

You can do this with any muscle or muscle group. You just need a heavy regular lift and an explosive move to immediately follow it with.

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My favorite variation on the dumbbell curl is the Static Curl. I generally recommend this curl when you are trying to breakthrough a plateau or you so happen to be bored with the regular bicep curls. The static curl works exceptionally well because it forces your bicep work at the toughest part of the curl–when your arm is parallel to the floor or 90 degrees with your body.

The static curl keeps one of your arms in that position while the other arm does normal reps. Once you finish those reps, you switch so that your other arm will stay in that static position while the other does its reps. Just to make myself clear, both arms will be holding dumbbells.

Your static arm will be contracted, tense, and working hard the entire time your other arm is working. If you have never done this variation on the curl before, try it. It will probably kick your ass. Especially if you are one of those people who swing their bodies while doing curls–you might want to try a lower weight in that case.

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To follow up my previous post about push-ups and to continue my love for this particular exercise, Men’s Health has a great article about the different variations of the push-up for a more total body exercise. By the time you’re able to do 50 straight push-ups, you should employ some of these variations to your routine to keep things fresh. Muscles respond best when you shock them with new and different exercise routines.

The push-up has the wonderful quality of being able to not only work your chest, shoulders, and triceps like the bench press but, also your back, abs, and glutes. These variations will work even more muscles as they’ll force you to use the often ignored stabilizing muscles.

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