Sit Ups or crunches……
Sit-ups or crunches don’t work, but before you call me out, let me explain a little. This is the reason it’s so hard to grow when you’re training, this see-saw battle of trying to gain muscle and keep your stomach flat.
Women have it easy, as in women carry all of their fat on their ass and their thighs. And thanks to ‘JLO’ and ‘Beyoncé’, having a big ass is fashionable. There’s nothing fashionable about a man’s protruding gut!
A salad a day, keeps the doctor away
Diet, even more so than exercise is key, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if you’re a beer monster or you think pizza is one of the food groups. You will be stuck with that pregnant look until they can’t close the lid on your eternal place of rest.
I have friends that supposedly train, who post their meals on social media with frequent regularity. Fatty foods shouldn’t be in a weight lifter’s repertoire, but they love to caption these meals “Cheat Day”. Absolute nonsense, they eat terrible more days than they eat healthily. Their cheat days really are cheat months or to be honest, cheat years!
Gym Selfies, really?
They’re bereft of discipline, eat terrible then go to the gym and take selfies in their muscle vests. Posting their pics with captions like “Another hard workout is done”, “Killing it in the gym today” or “Early morning session”. When you look at their picture, you’ll see pectoral muscles that look more like a teenage girl developing her breasts. The top part of their Vest looks like a sports bra, spindly, flabby arms and they’re doing their best to suck in their gut.
The general consensus in the fitness world is that it’s seventy percent diet and thirty percent exercise. So if you can’t control what goes into your mouth, you will never progress and are doomed to a lifetime of sucking in your stomach whenever someone pulls out their camera phone.
Sit-Ups and Beer?
Beer is the worst thing you can consume. Most beers are 5%, so what’s in the other 95% that you’re consuming? Over the years you build up a tolerance to beer and need more to get a good buzz going. So you drink six, seven beers on a Friday, the same on Saturday and a few on Sunday to relax before you start your working week.
That is a guaranteed formula to walk around like a little chunky. Wine is not much better, because wine and beer are both full of sugar; alcohol in its pure unadulterated form is unpalatable. So a truckload of sugar is added to alcohol to make it palatable for the masses.
I currently don’t consume alcohol, I don’t socialise with anyone who drinks. I would not suffer a girlfriend who drinks either. As Richard Gere said in Pretty Woman, “I’m high on life, can’t you tell.”
Conclusion
So to conclude, if having six-pack abs is more important to you than a six-pack of beer, sign up at your local gym for the H.I.I.T Classes. Run up hills or get yourself a mountain bike and get pedaling. Oh, I forgot to mention, riding a mountain bike is pure unadulterated, tremendous fun. It will also get you abs quicker than any amount of sit-ups or crunches.
I had the time of my life whizzing around on that beast, because it took me back to my childhood when I and my friends “the squad” would chop up the block on our BMX’s, darting in and out of alleys and through the neighbourhood streets.
You’ll have to make a conscious decision about alcohol, I started by limiting myself to two beers whenever I would go out, although you’ll always get that one alcoholic idiot that will try to pressure you into drinking more. Because he’s an alcoholic, he can’t stand to see someone exhibit self-control.
Even after you explain that you’re driving home and you’re at the legal alcohol limit. He’ll still try to pressure you to drink, calling you names and insulting your manhood because he feels you’re claiming a higher status than him by exacting self-control.
So limit yourself to two beers, try to improve your circle of friends, because if all your friends drink excessively and “Get on it”. Maybe start making new friends? Make friends at the gym, look for people who can help you grow. (Pun not intended.) Follow the same habits as Mike O’Hearn from the gladiators.
Remember train hard, cardio is your friend, not your enemy, lift heavy and lift often. A cheat day means exactly that, eat clean all week and have only one day you have a pizza, burger or the cheat food of your choice…!
Good luck, nobody cares, train harder…