Winding Down

So if you couldn't figure out by the lack of posts recently, I should say that I wrapped this up after week 7. I realized that I had achieved all the results I wanted and that there was no point in blogging about "progress" anymore. Having said this, I want to make it known that I will continue to post here whenever I have a particularly creative idea, amazing workout, diet update, or just my thoughts. I think that a state of fitness isn't something that anyone should achieve and ever let go of. The idea of a lifestyle is more appealing and my goal is to continue striving for more within reason.

For all of the people who have been reading, thank you! It's been fun doing this. It was also a lot more work than I would have expected and I occasionally forgot to post workouts. Whatever. Here are before and after photos. They aren't the same exact type of photo so look at the general progress rather than the specific locations on the body.

These two pictures actually show the same side. The bottom one was taken with the phone's front-facing camera so you'll have to think about that when you mentally compare the two. I think I made great overall progress in shedding a good amount of body fat and building my abs back.
















The picture below shows the thick and blocky six pack that I developed. My abs do not look block in the picture to the right since I was flexing differently. I attribute this thickness to my incorporation of heavy cable crunches into every ab workout.

I'd say more here but there really isn't much else to say. It was fun maintaining a healthier lifestyle and tracking the progress was awesome. It ended up being more work than I thought it would be. I'll continue to post on this blog as I see fit so stay tuned!

 

Today's Ab workout

The hardest thing to do is get yourself in the right spot mentally when it comes to doing an ab workout. Most people put it at the end of the workout but some do it at the beginning. If you jump right into it you may feel lethargic and not squeeze the most out of the workout. If you do it at the end, you'll have the energy and bloodflow but may get bored (and maybe not have energy..) after having finished your main workout. These aren't the best arguments but everyone creates their own.

I think the best thing to do is to incorporate your ab workout into your main workout side by side. Rather than separating the chest workout and the ab workout, do a set of chest and then do abs. Irrespective of what main muscle group you do or if you're only focusing on abs, I suggest running at least half a mile at a fast pace to get the blood flowing and to set your mind right. I cannot stress this enough. RUN.

The ab workout below was fully incorporated into my back workout which I will not list here. For ease of understanding I will list everything as if I performed all of the exercises in exact order.

Workout:

1) L-Pullups
*Make sure that your hips do not sway back behind your shoulders. Always keep the hips forward and squeeze the entire core to maintain control. Pull up with your upper back. I grip a little narrower than shoulder width.

-4x8

2) Cable Crunches
*Use the straight bar attachment and let your arms hold it behind your head as you move down. If you feel this in your hip flexors adjust your body until you feel it in your abs. When you get tired you may start feeling the stress in your lower back. Stop the movement and rest before finishing your set. Form is key.

-6x12 w/ 80 lbs.

3) Toes to Bar
*Wide grip on the pull-up bar and do leg raises. Bring the toes up and over the bar. Try to keep the lower back out of this and use good core control.

-4x10

4) Dragonflags
*Build up to these slowly. There are plenty of resources on the web and youtube discussing various methods of building up to these. Again, form is key. If you feel the hip flexor or lower back coming in to compensate for an exhausted rectus abdominus, stop the movement and rest before finishing your set.

-4x10


---> The key is to do all of the reps in the exercise. You can divide the sets up however you want. For example, as long as you do 32 L-pullups you're done with that exercise. It doesn't matter if you do 32 sets of 1 or 1 set of 32. Anything in between is fine and satisfactory.