Best Articles On How to Lose Belly Fat, Get a Six Pack or Flat Abs The Mythical Six Pack – Do You Have One?

Best Articles On How to Lose Belly Fat, Get a Six Pack or Flat Abs

The Mythical Six Pack – Do You Have One?

Good abdominal muscles are something that are coveted by a large percentage of the world’s population. A six pack you could bounce coins off is something to be coveted, particularly if you are a man, or so we are led to believe. And yet, a massive number of us not only don’t have a six pack but seem well on our way to developing a party keg instead.

It is impossible to avoid reminders of the six pack we are asked to cultivate. Watch any number of pop videos and you will find that these impossibly young and energetic stars all seem to have the mythical six pack. How did they manage it? You can go through a training regime that seems to be up there with what the Navy Seals carry out, and still not have what you are looking for.

Should you just give it up as an impossibility? I mean, it would be fantastic to have that six pack, but there are plenty of people who manage to get along without it. Does it matter all that much? If you feel comfortable with how you look, do you need to go to the effort of working on the abs until you are exhausted (but sculpted)?

The truth is that you are the only one who can decide if you want, need and can get the six pack look. If you want to be a successful pop star then the chances are that you will have to try and get those abs. If you want to model sports gear or underwear, then you’ll find it hard to get work without those abs. So do you want the six pack, or are you happy with a keg?

Get The Body You Have Always Wanted. All It Takes Is…

Everyone wants to be fit and healthy to a certain extent. There are certainly enough people around who are perfectly happy to be well-covered, or whatever euphemism you want to use, and as long as they are not physically unwell they see no reason to change. Then there are other people who do not feel comfortable unless they are more sculpted than the next guy.

People will go to incredible lengths to get the look that they feel they are meant to have. There are plenty of body builders, both male and female, who actually develop eating disorders because they are terrified of carrying even a millimeter of extra fat. Although this is eventually damaging to what they are looking for – you need those calories to turn them into muscle – it is still common.

The most important thing you can have is your health. It is more than possible to get the body you want, six pack and all, while remaining physically healthy. Therefore it is important to bear in mind that there are some sacrifices that it is not worth making in order for you to look better. Think about this: some models and actors who look great on camera look a lot worse close up because their eyes, skin and hair all bear tell-tale signs of the short cuts they have taken.

If you want to achieve that six pack look, you need to bear in mind that arriving at it will take some work on your part, and that that work will be easier to do if you eat healthily. If you avoid food because you think it is easier to turn a flat stomach into a six pack, you will find that it holds you back more than it helps you.

Why Everyone Wants A Six Pack

The six-pack has taken on a level of importance in people’s imaginations that is stunning to behold. The lengths to which people will go to look better and have rock-hard abs are impressive, but can be a little bit scary too. Why do people go to such lengths to have something that many other people seem to manage well without?

In some ways, the mythology that surrounds the six pack comes from the same place as the peer pressure that is often blamed for people developing eating disorders. It is not quite true to say that where girls develop eating disorders, guys will over-exercise to achieve a six pack, but there is definitely some spirit of truth in the argument.

Just as young female pop stars and celebrities tend to be skinny and energetic – which encourages those who idolise them to try and be the same – the male objects of female desire tend to be quite “sculpted”. Male pop stars are frequently possessed of a “six pack”, and lusted over by girls and gay men. To be more attractive, guys will often seek to develop a six pack of their own.

There are ways and means to achieve the six pack, and this is an important consideration. Some people will take short cuts to get the look, and when you take a short cut you may well be at risk of taking a wrong turn. There are ways to achieve the look without taking a wrong turn, and it is important to avoid this.

Do You Have Problems With Negative Body Image?

Body image is more of an issue today than it ever has been. Look at any number of magazines in your local newsagents or at news stands and you will see examples of the “perfect” look as well as magazines that tell you how to get it, next to other magazines which relate the stories of people who felt like dying because they couldn’t achieve the look they wanted.

It is tremendously easy to develop a negative self-image with regard to your body these days. Look at the headlines when a celebrity puts on a few extra pounds and you will see how opinions are shaped. Someone who is carrying extra weight can become the victim of a campaign of criticism that borders on the slanderous.

If you are coming from a position of negative body image, you are not in the right place to go for the perfect look. It sounds like a logical impossibility, but the truth is that people who are disgusted with themselves are not in a good position to turn things around in a lasting and correct way. They are far more likely to take short-cuts which will not help them in the long term.

This does not mean that you have to go on a long journey of discovery to get the look you want, only that you have to give a lot of thought to how you will go about getting there. If you are prepared to do a lot of hard work and ready to deal with setbacks, then the process of getting the best abs will be a lot more manageable.

How Abs Scams Sucker People In

When you look on the internet for any considerable amount of time, you will see just how keen people are to sell something to you. It is practically impossible to spend any real time online without seeing ads, spam emails and other marketing tactics that are designed to hook you in, and they are often quite successful in attracting customers.

Why are tactics which border on the scamming, and ones which even step over that border, so often successful? The major reason is not, whatever people may tell you, that people are ultimately gullible. In fact, it is a testament to the clever tactics the marketers use. It is hard to sell someone an item or a service they don’t already want or need.

It is a lot easier to sell someone something they think they need, or that they want. If someone in a world without lies told you tomorrow that you could own a machine that printed legally passable money, and get it for a low price, you would jump at the chance to have it, would you not? In the world of the internet, people realise that good abs are something desirable, so they are easy to sell.

Does this mean that everyone who tries to sell an abs-hardening program online is trying to scam you? No – not at all – but what it does mean is that you have to be careful that you are not buying something because you are too desperate to not buy it.

The Best Abs – But At What Cost?

In life, nothing comes for free. This does not mean that you have to pay cash for everything, mind you, but that everything that is worth having requires you to compromise. You can acquire money, possessions and property in life by being selfish and only looking out for yourself, but the time will come when your lack of empathy costs you something of worth.

This is something that people need to be aware of. There is nothing worth having that can be had without some form of sacrifice. If the thing you want most is to have rock hard abs, you cannot just wish them into being. You have to work for them, and you may also have to pay cash to get them. It is for the best if these are the only sacrifices you have to make.

Look at professional sportspeople and body builders. Although there are rigorous drug-testing procedures in these fields there are still professionals who will go to the lengths of breaking the rules to get the body shape they feel they need. When it comes to training simply to get a look that you are happy with, it is all the easier to be tempted to take drugs.

Drugs are one of the most dangerous short cuts a person can take – recreational drugs will ape positive physical and mental feelings, but leave a trail of destruction when they wear off. Physique-enhancing drugs may well make you better built, but this may come at the cost of your physical health. While some supplements are fine, beware of the drugs that do you harm.

Chasing The Impossible Dream?

Rock hard abs are something that it seems every young man – and a fair proportion of girls, too – are expected to want to cultivate in order to be the best they can be. It can lead to issues with self-image and it can also lead to painful struggles with a process that is always going to take time. In order to make sure that you achieve the look you are going for, you need patience.

Many people will become disillusioned with the search for the perfect abs. It is not difficult to see why this happens – when we want something, we always want it “now”, and we are not well conditioned to wait. We are not conditioned to expect to work hard and we don’t deal well with  setbacks, but the truth of the matter is that when it comes to getting perfect abs, we will have to wait and we may have points where we hit a wall.

This being the case, it is easy to understand why people become discouraged, and to see why they conclude that there is no point in chasing after something that appears impossible. However, it is not impossible to get the perfect abs. It is difficult, and there is a world of difference between difficult and impossible. Difficult things can be done, but they take hard work. Impossible things can be ignored because they are impossible.

A lot of mental strength is required to get the abs you feel you deserve. Once you have put in the hard work you will see the benefits, and although it is always difficult to push yourself the extra mile, it is a test worth enduring and passing.

The Value Of Persistence

Hard work is a necessity in life if you want to get anywhere. If you want to make money, then you have to be prepared to work for it. If you want a relationship to work, then you have to be aware that give and take are required. If you are building or making something, it will not put itself together and you have to be prepared to make the effort to do it yourself.

Although the rock hard abs you are looking for can be achieved somewhat quickly, the truth of the matter is that this process will never be instant. You are a human being with a human body. You can’t just think yourself thin, wish more hair on to your head or make your legs longer with the power of your mind. You need to put in genuine work to achieve self-improvement.

If you are told or advised that you can have the abs you have always dreamed of in just a couple of days with no punishing work, then you ought to be aware that this is an outright lie. Sometimes, it is best to be honest right down the line. You will have to work to get better abs – how else are they going to happen? – but if you are smart, the amount of work may not be as punishing.

Impossible promises are not uncommon on the internet – look at the spam folder in your email for absolute proof of this. They are a bid to draw money out of desperate customers who feel that they have exhausted all of their options. Don’t fall for them, and be persistent.

Why Is It Necessary To Be In Good Shape?

Look at the world around you. People are all different shapes and sizes, and it seems that being in “good shape” is no guarantee of physical health. It is certainly no guarantee of happiness, unless you are fortunate enough to be able to say that the one thing that would make you truly happy is being in better shape physically.

It would be easy to come to the conclusion, then, that your physical condition is not important, and that all that matters is being comfortable in yourself. In fact, that is true to a very large extent, and the importance of being in good physical condition is not really connected to personal happiness. But the reason that it is worth chasing is that it has major upsides.

The better condition you are in physically, the easier you will find it to do gruelling work. If you have strong abdominal muscles you will find it a lot easier to do something like moving house, for example. It will be considerably easier to lift heavy things and carry them, and you will feel less like death warmed up after a day’s work.

There is a correlation between physical condition and emotional comfort. Think how you feel when you are suffering from ‘flu or another illness which saps your strength. It is easier to deal with things when you feel physically ready for them, and working on your abs is one part of this. This is why it is worth working on your conditioning.

Always Beware The Celebrity Endorsement

There can be no doubt about it, celebrity sells. Look at the advertisements shown during the breaks in your favorite TV program, and you will notice that at least half of them feature a celebrity in one way or another. The message that these ads seek to convey is that you should want this product, because the celebrity has one and thinks it is great.

It is important to be a little bit cynical about this use of celebrities, because when it comes down to it there is no real way of knowing that the celebrity actually uses or even likes the product. They are paid money to say they do, and there is a long list of things that people will do for money. Lying about a product is not even one of the more outlandish ones.

It is better to feel that a company has put their money into developing a product that really works than to think that they have spent the huge fees that most celebrities can command in order to convince people that this product is what they want. So when it comes to firming your abs, don’t look at the celebrity endorsing the product. Look at what the ad tells you.

If there is sound scientific research underpinning why a product works, this should always be more convincing in persuading you to part with your money than any kind of endorsement. It is more important to know why something works than to know who says it does. People can be bought, principle cannot.

Building The Perfect Body

Although there are differing levels of importance placed on the way we look, pretty much no-one would ever turn down the opportunity to have the perfect body if getting there did not demand too much from them. But this in itself raises some questions. What exactly is the perfect body? How is it achieved, and will some people simply never have what for them constitutes the best body?

The concept of a perfect body could be described as “flawed” right out of the gate. Even from a point of view of those who are physically fit, there are many types of bodies that are perfect for different things – the perfect athlete’s body, the perfect footballer’s body and the perfect body for weight lifting. So let’s assume you are after the best beach body – the one with the abs.

Getting perfect abs will involve doing abdominal exercises. This is just a fact. Even if you accept that there are supplements you can take which are not banned by pretty much every sporting body on account of being dangerous, you will have to do what is necessary to enhance those abs even when the fat is burned away.

You cannot hope to have the perfect body simply out of a box – you’ve got to work for it. Is this such a bad thing anyway? By following a process you will be able to monitor the changes that the process takes you through and adjust to them, making you far more confident when the process reaches its end.

Are You Committed?

Commitment is a fairly loaded word. Ask around in enough places and you will find that commitment is required from so many different people in so many different situations. It is a quality desired in, and missing from, men in a relationship. It is also demanded of employees under contract to a company. Commitment requires that you pick a position and stick to it.

It is essential that you display commitment when you are looking to get the body condition that you feel is important to you. To achieve anything, you need to be able to commit. If you are able to show commitment, you will be able to stick to things when times are difficult. Sometimes, losing weight and building muscle will throw difficulties at you, and then you need to be ready for it.

There is a certain element in marketing that tells you that it is possible to have what you want without compromising and without pushing yourself. This is persuasive because people want to believe it. It would be marvellous if it were true, but it just isn’t. Sometimes, you have to compromise and push yourself.

If you are committed, then you will see good results from your endeavors. The more committed you are, the easier you will find it to be successful and to roll over the difficulties that you encounter in any activity. If you commit to improving your abs, you will end up with the right results. Don’t shrink away from the challenge.

Good Conditioning Means Overall Better Health

“Health” and “fitness” are two terms which are often used as though they were synonymous, when in reality they are not. However, the reason that they are used in this way is that they are influential upon one another. The healthier you are, the easier it is to stay fit, and the fitter you are the healthier you are likely to be.

This extends to getting the best abdominal muscles. Good abdominal muscles will provide better muscular support to every organ in the area and allow you to have a better level of digestive health. Not only that, but the benefits of doing the right exercise, eating well and taking the right supplements will also have an important effect on your general health.

Putting the work in to get the best abs is something worth doing for your own good, and it allows you to learn about yourself, find out more about your body and gain in strength and conditioning. Having good core strength is highly beneficial in terms of getting the right exercise for many other purposes. If you are strong in the abdominal muscle area it will help your endurance for general exercise.

The most important thing you can do if you want to be healthy is look after your body. The increased awareness that you will gain by working on your abs and monitoring the results will be of vital importance when it comes to increasing your general level of fitness, with positive results all round.

Better Abs Means Better Sport Performance

One of the major reasons that people work on their physical fitness is the importance that general fitness has in terms of performing well in sport. Someone can be technically gifted in a sport – skilled at passing a football, able to hit an excellent forehand in tennis or have superb accuracy when shooting a basketball. But when you lack the core fitness that professionals have, the technical ability is not enough.

Increasing your core fitness and strength will allow you to better showcase your sporting ability. If your tennis shots are particularly good, then adding strength in your core region (of which the abdominal muscles are a key part) will enable you to play those shots more often and more consistently. It will also allow you to put more power into shots and running.

The amount of work that you do to maintain fitness is reflected in the results that you get on the sporting field. There are players, and indeed even teams, who are well-known for being prodigiously skilful in short bursts, and starting matches particularly well, yet end up losing more often than not because they don’t have the ability to finish as well as they start.

If you build better abs, you will find that the final few minutes of the match go a lot better for you. You will be better able to maintain concentration because you will not be so tired. You will have better posture when it comes to taking a shot because your core strength allows you to stand upright. Better core strength makes you a better athlete.

The Importance Of Strong Abdominal Muscles

Endurance and hard work are not things which come naturally to all of us. Indeed, there are many who, when faced with a particular task, will go at it with the zeal of someone who is possessed initially and will find themselves flagging very shortly afterwards. This makes every task a lot harder to complete, because they find they are in pain or their body won’t do what they want it to.

This is an issue of “core fitness”. Your body is built in a certain way, which requires it to place quite a bit of pressure on the muscles that are closer to the center. Try standing up for twelve hours. Nothing more than that, just standing up. Your legs will get tired, because they need to be active, but you will also notice that you get tired in other areas too.

This is because, no matter what you are doing – unless you are lying down and resting – you will be using your core muscles in order to make everything do what it needs to do. People with poor core strength will find everything much more difficult because they are unable to rely on the core muscles to do everything they have to do, and they will tire much more easily.

If you work on your abdominal muscles you will find that things get easier. You will be able to do even the most basic task better, for longer and at a more intense level the better your core strength gets – and as a result, you will feel a lot fresher and accumulate fewer twinges and muscle pulls.

The Perils Of Over-Exercising

For someone who is not fond of jargon, the modern world can be an incredibly frustrating and annoying place. We are told to push the envelope, feel the burn, and pick the low-hanging fruit until such time as we want to push the envelope down the throat of the person telling us all of this. One saying which has become annoying over the years is “Don’t work harder, work smarter!”.

The reason that this phrase has become annoying is fairly simple – overuse. In fact, the phrase has not been worked smarter, it has been worked harder because, once you analyse it, it is a pretty good piece of advice and is worth paying some attention to. There are many people who are never out of the gym and yet they can’t produce the same results as those who take days off here and there.

If you want perfect abdominal muscles, the truth is that you won’t get them by throwing yourself into an incredibly intense gym routine that requires you to be through the doors first thing in the morning and not leave until the sky has gone dark. If you do this, you are going to injure yourself, and you’ll be out of the gym for even longer than you expected.

You do need to work hard, but pushing this to its furthest limit is only a recipe for pain and failure. Instead of exercising all the time, stick to a routine and make the best of the time that you are exercising. Instead of hitting the gym every day, let your body recover and strengthen before going back, and then profit from the strength you have gained to build more.

The Real Truth About Abs

If you want to have perfect six pack abs, congratulations. You already do. There, that was easy, wasn’t it?

OK, what you really want is for your six pack abs to show on the outside, and this is a more difficult process altogether, but the truth of the matter is that those abdominal muscles are already there, you just have to let them out. And although this will involve some exercise, it is more a matter of what they are covered with.

The major reason that those of us who do not have six pack abs are in that position is because are abdominal muscles are hidden underneath fat. This does not mean we are fat per se, however, no matter what some diet gurus will tell you. We are expected to carry some fat simply in order to survive from day to day.

The first step to six pack abs is to lose the fat in the right way. You could lose it by dieting in such a way as to practically starve yourself, but you’ll find that the abs are not as pronounced as you would like them to be. Instead, you need to eat healthy food and make sure you have the energy to exercise regularly.

In addition, you want to give those abs a platform. You can only do this by exercising the area in the right way, and this – combined with the cardio exercises which will burn fat away – is your road to perfect abs.

A Cosmetic Difference Or A Real Benefit

When you see an absurdly toned dancer or actor flouncing around a TV screen with their bulging abs showing, it is easy to come to the conclusion that they are simply showing off a look that will make some people find them attractive. It is equally easy to conclude that they look absolutely ridiculous, and to associate good abs with bad music. But there are good reasons to build better abs.

Your abdominal muscles are an essential part of your core strength. “Core strength” is a phrase used very often on sports casts both on television and on radio. A player who runs sixty yards leaving opponents in his wake one minute, and when he tries the exact same thing ends up falling over his feet, will often be dubbed as lacking “core strength”. So what is this core strength?

Well, the abdominal muscles are, as you will see if you stand in front of the mirror, around your center. Along with the back muscles and spine, they provide support for the whole body, and if they are weak then they will pose a problem for any kind of strenuous activity. Building those muscles is not just a matter of making teenage girls buy your album, it is about being and feeling fitter.

If you build your abdominal muscles in the right way, then you will find that all other exercise becomes much easier. If you are planning to get fit all over, the best place to start is with the core muscles, and this means getting the best abs you can.

Great Myths Of Ab Exercises #1: They Burn Ab Fat

There is a prevailing myth, which is believed by many and for obvious reasons, that exercising a particular area will lead to the burning of fat in the same area. If you believe that myth, then now is the time to stop. There is no such thing as spot fat reduction. Your body deposits fat where it feels the need to, and exercising an area does nothing to change this fact.

If you are being told that exercising your ab muscles will cause you to lose ab fat, then you are being told a half-truth. Yes, strenuous exercise will burn fat, but muscle exercises do not have fat reduction as their main priority and it will not be the main result of such exercises. Exercising a particular muscle will strengthen the muscle and give it better endurance and prominence, not reduce the fat.

What it may do is reduce the appearance of fat by making the muscle more defined and more prominent. However, the only exercises which attack fat head-on are cardio exercises, and these are by far the most efficient way of burning off excess fat. If you get out of breath and sweat from exercising your ab muscles, or your calves, you will lose fat, but it could come off any part of you.

Therefore if you are not fat per se, but are carrying a bit of a paunch, the likelihood is that you have simply got ill-defined muscles and you will get better abs simply by exercising those muscles. It won’t be because you are losing fat, but because you are gaining muscle tone.

Great Myths Of Ab Exercises #2: The More You Do, The Better

There is a tendency among many of us in society to assume that because doing something is good for us, doing more of it is better. To a certain extent this holds true. If you walk for ten minutes a day, then walking for thirty minutes tomorrow will be better for you – that much is not in dispute. However, there is such a thing as too much, and this is a fact that people seem to miss too often.

For example, if you have a headache and take a couple of aspirin, you should feel better within half an hour. If you have a headache and take twenty aspirin, you will feel much worse. Indeed, take many more aspirin than the stated dose and you won’t be feeling anything at all pretty soon, so you can have too much of something even if it is meant to do you good.

The same is true of exercise. People labor under the impression that because doing intensive abdominal training yesterday has caused the muscles to look more defined, doing the same or more today will make them look even better. But this completely ignores the way that muscle exercises work.

Your muscles get more defined with exercise because every time they are worked they develop small fissures or tears. As those fissures are repaired, the muscle becomes stronger – but this procedure does not happen immediately. If you pile exercise on top of exercise, you merely widen the tear, and if you widen the tear to too great an extent you will find the muscle becomes useless.

Great Myths Of Ab Exercises #3: Equipment Is Expensive

There is a great desire on the part of many marketers to tell us that spending our money in a certain way is essential, because without this item or that service we can never have the things we want. And yet it is important to remember one thing above all – the human body is an organism and it will not recognise how much money you spend on something, it will do what is natural.

Exercise equipment can be pretty expensive – you only need to visit a sports shop to see clear and undeniable proof of that. And yes, some of the more expensive equipment is impressively efficient. No-one can argue that good craftsmanship and clever engineering come at a price – but then again, our bodies are not designed to respond solely to what can be made – they respond to natural stimuli.

Being entirely honest, expensive exercise equipment may bring better results in a shorter time. There is no point even trying to deny that. But if you are told that you need this equipment, without it improvement will be impossible, you are being lied to. Your body will respond to exercise, with or without equipment. That’s just how it is designed.

There are numerous exercises that can be undertaken without equipment, and will improve the look of your ab muscles. There are also countless exercises that can be done with very inexpensive equipment and, again, these will improve the definition of your ab muscles. Don’t get hoodwinked into buying something hugely expensive because you “need” it. You don’t.

Patience May Be The Key

Exercise is not always fun. Everyone who has done any amount of exercise knows this to be true, and anyone who seeks to deny it is simply deluding themselves. Although many of us, perhaps even most, enjoy training when we are doing it, the fact is that when the endorphins wear off it can be a grind. It is also true that actually motivating yourself to train can be pretty tough.

Rome was not built in a day. Equally, you will not start one day with ab muscles you can’t stand and end it with muscles that could crack a walnut. You may have to put in a lot of work to get results you are happy with, so it is important to be patient. You may find yourself asking what you are bothering for, after a week of exercises makes little difference. It is a test.

If you step away from an exercise regime because you are finding it difficult, then you will never achieve the results you are looking for. Exercise needs to be tough to be effective. If it wasn’t demanding it wouldn’t be exercise, because it is in pushing yourself that you improve yourself. You won’t lose weight without getting out of breath or starving yourself – and the latter makes you ill.

You won’t have immediate results – it just isn’t possible. And it is totally understandable that you will question the point of doing these exercises after a time. It’s called resistance, and the only way to deal with it is to push through it and come out the other side. If you are willing to do this, you will get results.

Beware Of Excess

Although it is certainly true that resistance is something you need to meet and push through, it is important to have an element of balance when it comes to exercising and improving your abs. While it is undoubtedly the case that you will gain nothing if you stop when it gets difficult, there is an equal necessity to be cautious of “overdoing it” when exercising.

It has been noted by experts on eating disorders that a number of anorexics tend to combine the process of starving themselves with a program of excessive exercise. And while many people will associate anorexia with teenage girls who are built like twigs, it is not unknown for training body builders to be prone to the illness as well.

Indeed, it is not so cut and dried that you can say the problem is one of not enough food and too much exercise. Some people can eat what would be a perfectly healthy diet for an office worker who cycles to their job in the morning and home at night, but do an amount of exercise that demands much more food.

It is entirely possible to exercise yourself ill. We all know that you can cause yourself an injury by exercising excessively, but you can certainly make yourself unwell in other ways – from dehydration to malnutrition and many more problems besides. Make sure you take a rest when necessary, or you can do yourself serious damage.

Warming Up To A Theme

It is a mechanical fact that to make something work, you have to exert a force of some sort – and it is equally the case that exerting a force on something can cause it to break. This is particularly the case if you exert the force to something that is not ready for it. This is true of car engines, of bridges and you had better believe it is true of the human body as well.

If you are planning to do rigorous exercises to build your abs, it is simply essential that you warm up before you do so. Warm-up exercises are seemingly inconsequential on the surface, as they do not make big demands on the body. But what they do is create a looseness that is essential in order to allow your body to perform more strenuous exercises.

There is often an opinion in some gyms that “real men don’t warm up”. This is the kind of mentality that makes some men – and some women too – pick up the heaviest weight they can see seconds after walking into the gym. It is the same mentality that puts many body builders in a neck brace and unable to train for weeks, even months.

Your body is in many ways like a machine -  like a car, particularly, in that it needs you to put the right things in and operate it in the right way if it is to work properly. Without this consideration, it is likely to sustain damage. Don’t let the idea of proving your toughness stand in the way of doing things right – you need to get things right in the long term.

It’s Not Always About The Six Pack

For many people, the idea of having a six pack is the absolute optimum achievement of exercising. Many of us will hit the gym as often as we can for as long as we can to achieve the perfect body shape, and will never be truly happy with the results until we have achieved perfection. This can be enough to drive a person to obsession, and with obsession comes loss of reason.

Not everyone can have that perfect action hero six pack. Indeed, not every action hero can have one, and many of them will have body and stunt doubles for this precise reason. There are more body shapes in this world than we can realistically count, and if you aren’t made to have flat abs you’re not going to have them, whatever you do.

Does this mean that if you cannot achieve the body you want, you should just give up? Not at all. Exercise, when undertaken correctly, is good for you. There is no reason at all not to exercise your abdominal muscles, even if the closest you’ll ever get to a six pack is when you open the fridge on a night off.

There are reasons for abdominal muscle exercises other than the flashy flat stomach, after all. As well as being important for core strength and fitness, and having a knock-on effect on general fitness, it can allow you to lose the pot belly that has been making you glum. You may not end up with flat abs, but having a harder stomach and looking better in tight clothes is a pretty good silver medal.