what does your midsection look like right now for reference this is what it would look like at 50% body fat at 40% your waistline is smaller but your abs are still buried at 30% your stomach is much flatter but you still don't have visible ABS once you get to 20% that's where your abs become visible and at 10% body fat you'll have a well-defined six-pack assuming you've developed your abs through proper training which we'll get to now at 6% body fat you'd be truly shredded lean enough for a pro bodybuilding competition in fact this is
an actual real life example of a natural body body builder who got down to 6.2% body fat measured by dexa but this zone is the six-pack sweet spot where most men want to be between 10 and 20% body fat this is where you'll have visible ABS but not suffer from the nasty side effects of extreme dieting and this is the same body fat display for women where the six-pack sweet spot is here around 18 to 28% body fat now if you're curious this is what my abs looked like at the end of my last cut
at around 10% body fat you can see that I have more of a four-pack than a six-pack and while you can't change the genetic structure of your abs I'm going to explain how to get your abs to pop regardless of the genetic hand you were dealt by using three science-based tools first how to train your abs optimally using just two exercises second how to adjust your diet that help you calculate exactly how much fat you need to lose and how to set up your diet to mathematically guarantee that you get there as long as you
follow the plan and third the supplements I recommend that are actually worth your money first let's talk about training now it's popular these days to say that AB training is a waste of time because the argument goes you can train them as much as you want if you're not lean enough you won't see the definition anyway but I disagree imagine applying this logic to any other muscle it'd be like saying don't train your shoulders because unless you're lean enough you're not going to see the definition anyway but no one ever says that the point is
you do need to train your abs so that when you cut down there's actually enough muscle there for them to pop through and if you build up your abdominal muscles through proper hypertrophy training they will pop more just like any other muscle but the problem with most AB training online is that most Fitness influencers showcase these fast-paced quote unquote fat burning circuit Style workouts which truly are a waste of time for the most part that's because these workouts don't actually get the abdominal muscles close enough to failure to stimulate meaningful hypertrophy they are essentially just
another form of cardio sure you'll burn a few extra calories but you're not building your six-pack instead to get your six-pack to really pop you'd be much better off doing Progressive overload training just like you would for any other muscle that means loading the ab muscles with weight and to build your best six-pack you really only need two exercises one weight loaded Crunch and one leg rate that's it for the loaded crunch you can do a cable crunch where you grab a rope kneel down and crunch while allowing your lower back to round as you
squeeze your abs don't yank the weight with your hands keep tension on your six-pack if you don't have a cable you can do plate weighted crunches by holding a plate against your chest and crunching down hard on your six-pack do these for three sets of 10 to 12 reps twice per week taking your last set all the way to failure that means you can't complete a full rep despite maximum effort every time you train try to add some weight or a rep while keeping your for form nice and controlled these will hit the full six-pack
but probably slightly emphasize the upper four pack so for some lower ab bias you should add a leg raise for these you can do them hanging from a pull-up bar or you can use a Roman chair I like the Roman Chair variation better because it keeps my lower back locked in which allows me to direct attention to my abs better now if you can't do a straight leg leg raise yet you can do bent knee raises instead do these for three sets of 10 to 20 also twice per week and also take your last set
all the way to failure to progress on these I prefer to add reps so I'll start at three sets of 10 and then I'll add one rep each week until I get to three sets of 20 at that point you can add some ankle weights or you can start slowing down the negative but once you're there you should have some pretty solid AB development anyway planks are great for general core strength and stability but if your goal is to build a six-pack I don't think they're the most efficient option and I would consider them optional
also anti-rotation movements can be great for targeting the transverse abdominis and obliques but they won't hit the six-pack muscles as directly or with as much tension as weighted crunches and leg raises will those are your main two so this is your full six-pack training plan you hit your abs twice per week and you can Shuffle the days around to whatever fits your schedule best it would also be smart to include some cardio in your plan even if it isn't required for fat loss new research shows that combining weight training and cardio leads to smaller wastes
than just weight training alone being more active with cardio will also allow you to eat more calories and more active people tend to be more successful in keeping the weight off over the long term so feel free to include 2 to 5 30 minute low to moderate intensity cardio sessions per week but the reality is you can do the most optimal Progressive AB training on the planet and until you get lean enough your abs simply won't be visible and that's where your nutrition comes in so next let's set up your six-pack diet it's very simple
take your current body weight in pounds and multiply it by 10 to 12 that's how many calories you'll eat then take your goal body weight also in pounds and multiply it by 0.8 to 1 that's how much protein you'll eat make sure you eat at least 50 g of fat per day and whatever's left over are free calories they can be carbs fat or protein now the types of foods you eat are far less important than simply hitting your daily targets remember the natural bodybuilder I showed earlier he got that lean while eating Pop-Tarts regularly
but still try to prioritize minimally processed nutritious Whole Foods over highly processed less nutritious junk food most of the time and here's a summary of the full six-pack diet if you want to pause and screenshot now obviously there are big differences in Metabolism from person to person and next I'm going to cover some mistakes that almost everyone makes so keep in mind that these calories and macros won't work perfectly for everyone for some people the calories will be a bit too high for others they'll be a bit too low luckily I spent the last 2
years helping create the best science-based algorithms for my nutrition app way to not only lose muscle and strength but rebound all the weight back as soon as the diet is over for a sustainable fat loss you want to lose about 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week so if you currently weigh 200 lb try to lose about 1 to 2 lb per week now if you have a lot of weight to lose and you end up cutting for more than 3 months straight I'd strongly recommend doing a 2 to 3 week diet break
somewhere in the middle for the diet break take your current body weight in pounds and multiply it by 16 to 18 and that'll be your calories for the 2 to 3 we diet break now you may gain a tiny bit of water weight or you may continue to lose weight during the diet break everyone's a little different in terms of how they respond but almost everyone sees better weight loss after the diet break is over and once you resume the caloric deficit again another very common mistake is relying on the body weight scale too much
while the scale can be a useful tool it can also be misleading especially if you're building muscle while losing fat for this reason I recommend taking progress photos in the same lighting at least once a month you may feel uncomfortable doing it at first but I promise you you'll be very glad you have the before photos to look back on and see how much progress you made taking monthly waist measurements can also help show that you are in fact losing fat even if the scale isn't moving as quickly as you'd like it's also very common
for people to have too lean of an end goal once you dip below the 8 to 10% zone for men or 18 to 20% zone for women you'll start experiencing low energy extreme hunger and reduced libido next let's talk about a few supplements that are worth taking and that I actually recommend the first is a protein powder this isn't required but it can make hitting your total daily protein intake a lot easier I'll usually have a 30 to 50 g prot R Shake immediately after training not because there's a super time sensitive anabolic window but
simply because it's an easy way for me to boost my daily total the second is creatine monohydrate I Take 5 gram every day it doesn't seem to matter when you take it and you don't need to cycle on and off Decades of research have shown no negative side effects and it's one of the only legal supplements that actually offers a meaningful boost in both strength and muscle mass it won't make you look watery or bloated but it doesn't seem to work for about 25% of people so you'll need to try it out for yourself to
see if you're a responder the third is caffeine now I personally take a pre-workout supplement for this but if you don't want to take pre-workout for whatever reason coffee or caffeine tablets can get the job done caffeine does have a small thermogenic effect and it does seem to burn some extra calories but it isn't clear if this translates to significantly more fat loss over the long term but that's not why I take it anyway I take it because it helps me feel more focused and alert during training you do develop a tolerance to caffeine though
so I would suggest only taking it on days when you feel like you really need it or cycling off it for a few weeks once every few months and if you want to have all the hard work of planning out your diet taking care of for you I'd strongly encourage you to download my nutrition app macro factor it's free for the first 2 weeks if you use the link below so you have absolutely nothing to lose and you can cancel anytime here are some of the Transformations I've collected already from people using the app this
is my own personal transformation where I lost 30 lb by using the apps algorithms exclusively I didn't manually adjust a single thing I just followed whatever the app told me the app is also extremely fast to learn and easy to use we've always had a barcode scanner that allows you to instantly track the macros but in some countries the macros wouldn't show up for every food so we recently added a nutrition label scanner so now you can track the macros on literally any food on the planet as long as it has a nutrition label it's
an absolute Game Changer the app also has tons of really cool analytics features that'll help you understand and visualize your journey over time and weekly check-ins to keep you accountable there's also a very active Facebook community and subreddit where you can ask questions and share your progress so you can try it out for 2 weeks for free at the first link in the description box down below and don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys all here in the next one
