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Washboard abs – everyone wants them, but many people never achieve them. The ever-elusive six-pack is one of the most desired body features, so why do only a small percentage of fitness fanatics achieve this milestone?
The answer isn’t difficult to understand. Having visible abdominals is the result of two factors:
- Having a low enough body fat percentage that you don’t have stomach fat covering your abs.
- Muscle hypertrophy to make the abdominal muscles pronounced as opposed to flat.
In this article, we are going to cover the hypertrophy side of things. If you’re an active weightlifter, chances are your abdominal muscles are already well-defined as a result of doing movements such as squats or deadlifts. However, if you’re not an active person, you probably don’t have very pronounced abdominal muscles – but don’t fret, as we have 5 Exercises To Give You A Ripped Six-Pack!
- Crunches: Lie on your back with your legs bent 90 degrees at the knee and your feet flat on the ground. Place your arms straight onto your thighs and sit up, focusing on sliding the palms of your hands up to your knees.
- Ankle taps: Lying on your back, lift your upper back about 6 inches off the ground and, keeping your arms straight, side crunch down so that your left arm taps your left ankle. Repeat on the right side.
- Bicycles: Lying on your back, place your hands behind your head and interlock your fingers. Lift your left leg from the hip, bent at the knee, until it’s vertical, simultaneously performing a crunch movement – rotating your upper body so that your right elbow meets your left knee. Once you repeat the action several times on both sides it should resemble the movement of riding a bicycle.
- Leg raise: Lying on the floor, keep your legs together and straight. Raise them up until they are vertical. Lower them back down until they are about 6 inches from the ground and repeat.
- Flutter kicks: Lying on your back with your legs straight and your arms by your side, lift your feet slightly off the ground and quickly lift each leg up and down in a scissor-like movement. Keep both legs constantly in the air.
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These are our Top 5 Exercises To Give You A Ripped Six-Pack. Performing these 3–4 times per week in a circuit rotation over 3 rounds should give you noticeable results in as little as 4 weeks! For most notable results, we advise aiming to have a body fat percentage of 12% or less (for men) or 15% or less (for women), as, typically, at this body fat percentage the abdominals will become more visible with less body fat covering them.
