get a six pack

Getting a six pack is not about starving yourself of food and wearing yourself out with endless cardio sessions. Will you get a six pack with this method? Yes. Are there better ways? Abso-freakin’-lutely! Sound, healthy, balanced nutrition combined with short, intense weight training sessions, and short, intense cardio intervals are way faster, more effective, and more healthy.
I wrote the following as a comment on rsuelzer’s completion post, but thought I should post it as an entry here so that it would be visible to the general “get a six pack” group.
1. Fat, believe it or not, is NECESSARY. It is one of three vital macronutrients for health, the other two being protein and carbohydrates. To not “eat anything with fat in it” will cause damage to every cell in your body, and you will start to feel joint pain, weakness, and mental cloudiness.
The common misconception is that the fat that you eat immediately becomes fat on your body, which just isn’t true. What is true is that you need to eat the RIGHT kinds of fat (Omega-3, Omega-6, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated), which will actually HELP YOUR METABOLISM FUNCTION BETTER, ALLOWING YOU TO BURN MORE FAT, you need to limit saturated fat, and cut out all the harmful kinds of fat (hydrogenated, partially-hydrogenated, or trans-fats).
2. Running 5 miles a day and doing every ab exercise until you cry is OVERTRAINING. You will be much better served by 3 full-body weight training sessions per week, and 2-3 short but INTENSE cardio sessions per week. No weight training workout should exceed an hour, and no cardio session should exceed 40 minutes. Run harder, faster, but shorter, and only a few times a week. Do your abs exercises as part of your weight training, only a few times per week. Never work the same muscle group two days in a row. This will allow your muscles the recovery time they need to grow, and your mind the recovery time you need to keep from getting burned out.
You should be paying me for this kind of professional advice. Do some research. Read a book. I recommend Body-for-Life, The Abs Diet, Men’s Health Power Training, and Men’s Health or Women’s Health magazines for starters. STOP RUNNING YOURSELF TO DEATH!

The key to a six pack is in the nutrition. Guess what? We all have abs. We all have a six pack, it’s just hidden under a layer (sometimes a BIG layer) of fat. Burning that fat is the key to getting the washboard stomach. For most people, what they need is to cut down their portion sizes and cut out the booze and sugar. Eating 6 small meals a day, each containing lean protein and good carbs such as whole grains, potatoes, and yams, and either fruit or vegetables, evens out blood-sugar and gets the metabolism cranking at its best.
As for the exercises, ultra-high rep workouts can actually hinder your progress! So can too much cardio. People who overtrain for years end up with a bit of a paunch because of too much cortisol, the stress hormone, which triggers the body to store fat. Less is more. You don’t need to work your abs more than twice a week for 10 minutes.
Cardio and weight training together are necessary for peak fat-burning and musclebuilding (the more muscle you build, the faster you burn fat – even at rest), as is one day off per week for recovery.
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) did a study of many abs gadgets and exercises and dubbed the “bicycle” the most efficient core/abs exercise. This is the one where you lay on your back, cup your hands behind your ears, keep your feet 6 inches off the floor, and bring alternating knees up to chest level as you twist your upper body to touch the opposite elbow. Crunches on a stability ball came in second place. So forget all the fancy ab-gadgets and just keep it simple.
I don’t usually recommend “diet books”, but I recommend The Abs Diet. It’s actually a really solid nutrition and exercise plan, one that you can follow with health and enjoyment for life, not a deprivation diet. Any restrictive diet based on deprivation and calorie-restriction, or restriction of protein, carbs, or fat (all VITAL nutrients for health) will ultimately fail with disasterous results, triggering a cycle of yo-yo dieting and misery.

Welcome to the Information Superhighway! Also known as the Internet, or World Wide Web, it is a tool which can be used to great benefit in the spread of knowledge, information, wisdom, and experience. It is a tool of communication, as you well know, but it is also a tool for RESEARCH. This seemingly lost art of research can hone your mental skills and allow you to find all the information you need to accomplish whatever goal you may have. With internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, research is made easy, however many people still allow themselves to fall into the trap of mental laziness that we all experienced as children.
I remember asking my parents questions about the definitions of words or the answers to homework questions, and their response, much to my dismay, was usually “look it up.” As much as I hated that at the time, the act of looking it up built a most useful skill: mental discipline.
All too many people cruise the internet chat rooms, bulletin boards, and blog sites posting questions such as “how do I get a six pack?” or “any tips?” This is mental laziness of the highest degree. There IS such a thing as a stupid question. It is a question that is asked with no thought behind it or no effort made by the asker to use the tools available to find the answer on his or her own. All the information is right there at your fingertips. Hundreds, if not thousands, of workout plans are available for free on the internet. Look it up. Asking a stupid question will, nine times out of ten, yield a stupid answer that will lead to a haphazard, disorganized, even potentially dangerous exercise regimen.
Find a proven, professionally-designed plan, follow the plan, work hard, finish the plan, accomplish your goal in the most organized and efficient manner, and you will have built not only superior physical fitness, but mental fitness as well.

Because I am a personal trainer and I care about your fitness, I will throw you a bone and steer you in the right direction. Here are some reputable sites with solid fitness and nutrition information and good workout plans. Get to it! Laziness is the enemy!

www.acefitness.org
www.coreperformance.com
www.bodyforlife.com
www.menshealth.com

This routine is composed of basic military-style calisthenics, running, and kickboxing on a heavy-bag. It has not only kept me in awesome shape over the last 4.5 months aboard ship, but has continued to improve my physique, particularly my abs.

M-W-F:
warm up all joints, head to toe

run 1.5 miles starting at 7 mph, working up to 9.5 mph

two sets of this:
50 push-ups
60 sit-ups
10 pull-ups
50 4-count flutter kicks

Note: On the second set I substitute 4-count oblique sit-ups for sit-ups)

15 minutes free kickboxing on the heavy bag

15 minutes of stretching head-to-toe (especially everything worked that day)

T-Th:

Head-to-toe joint warm-up

3 mile run, starting at 7 mph, working up to 9.5 mph

15 minutes free kickboxing on the heavy bag

15 minutes of stretching head-to-toe

In addition, I take the stairs almost every time, and on a ship with 9 levels, that’s alot of stairs.
Meals are cafeteria-style, so I’ve gotten very good at making the most nutritious choices out of a mediocre food selection. This plan isn’t perfect, and there’s always room for improvement.
The body needs to be shocked in order to keep improving. You can’t just keep doing the same routine forever, because your body adapts to it. You need to do something to change your routine about every 4 weeks or so. I’ve mainly done this aboard ship by gradually upping my reps and running distance, but when I go home I’ll change it up bigtime by doing some trail-riding, rock-climbing, swimming, weight training, and working on my kung fu forms.
It also helps to work with a trainer or take a class to be pushed beyond the intensity level to which you would push yourself.

A friend of mine had a New Year’s resolution last year to get a six pack in ‘06, and in May he challenged me to do it too. Well, I was already on the path towards Navy Surface Rescue Swimmer School, and by the end of that 5 week course, I had my six pack! (I’m happy to report that my friend was inspired by this hardcore approach and started training and eating right every day, and did achieve his goal before the end of ‘06.)

There are so many misconceptions about getting a six pack. Most people believe that you just do a ton of sit-ups. Some people are a little closer to the mark and realize they have to do other exercises too, but there’s more to it than that.

Your abs, composed of the Rectus Abdominus muscle (there are no “upper abs” and “lower abs” – just the RA which contains the six sections you’re looking for), the Internal Obliques, and the External Obliques, are in most cases hiding under a layer of fat. To get them to pop out, you not only have to build the muscles themselves by doing situps, crunches, leg-lifts, flutter-kicks, oblique crunches, and the like, but also (and this is really the key here) you need to burn the fat. You can’t spot-burn fat from one section of your body. That’s another common misconception. When you burn fat through intense bouts of cardio and a full-body strentgh training regimen, your body burns it all over, not just around the muscles you are working. That’s why my six pack popped out in Rescue Swimmer School. We were training 6-10 hours a day, working out the entire body and shredding fat. I’m lean all over, not just in my stomach.

As Sean Phillips wrote in his book, “ABSolution”, committing to a six pack is really about committing to be in the best overall shape of your life. I recommend his brother Bill’s book “Body-For-Life” for beginners, and then read “ABSolution”. “Core Performance” by Mark Verstegen is another good one, especially if you’re concerned more with boosting your athletic power than just having cosmetic muscles.