Six Pack Ab Workout - How To Increase Your Strength, Endurance, & Lose Belly Fat

By Jamin Thompson

When training to develop the all elusive six pack, it can be difficult to decide which ab workouts are the best. If you have been in the game for a while, you’ll notice that most of the ab workouts you’ll find out there are just abdominal targeting exercises. Pretty useless stuff if you want a killer midsection.

If you know anything about my training philosophy, you’ll know that I don’t preach training the abs directly to lose belly fat. You need a more total body approach that uses compound movements.

Here is a total body workout that will help you become more powerful, build your endurance, and torch your belly fat. The exercises you will use in this circuit are: back squats, power shrugs, plyo step-ups, depth jumps, jump squats, vertical jumps, and reverse crunches.

Exercise Descriptions:

Back Squats:
-Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, toes slightly turned out.
-Keep the abdominals tight.
-Slowly descend until the upper legs are parallel to the floor.
-Maintain an upright position and avoid leaning forward.
-Push back into the start position.
85% of one rep max for 8 reps

Power Shrugs: (from the floor)
-Using a barbell, keep your head up, chest up, and hips down.
-Lift with your legs from the floor to the knees.
-At the knees, explosively accelerate the bar up into a shrug while trying to “jump” up off the ground with a shrug at the top.
-Be sure to keep your arms straight through the entire exercise to prevent your arms from pulling the weight up instead of driving with the legs.
-Drop the weight to the floor after the shrug and repeat the lift from the ground.
4 sets of 8 reps

Plyo Step-Ups
-With one foot on a box or bench, drive into the bench with your lead foot and jump into the air.
-While in the air, switch feet and have the opposite foot land on the bench.
-Repeat this sequence rapidly trying to jump as high as you possibly can each time.
4 sets of 10 jumps each leg

Depth Jumps:
-Set up one high box about two feet away from a lower box.
-Step off the high box and as soon as your feet touch the ground, explosively jump straight up onto the lower box.
4 sets of 10 jumps

Jump Squats:
-Using a weight that is about 15-20% of your one rep max for the back squat.
-Dip into the squat position and jump as high as possible.
-Be sure to land under control with your knees bent. Be sure to land on the balls of your feet.
15-20% of one rep max for 10 reps

Vertical Jumps:
-From the standing position, jump as high as you can in the air.
Jump as many times as you can in 15 seconds.

Here’s the workout:
(You will complete this circuit two times with a :60 second rest between exercises)
1. Back Squat – 85% max – 8 reps
2. Power Shrug – 85% max – 8 reps
3. Jump Squat – 15-20% max – 10 reps
4. Depth Jumps – 10 reps
5. Vertical Jumps – As many as you can in15 seconds
6. Plyo Step-Ups – 10 reps
7. Reverse Crunches – 20 reps

I know that this circuit is not your typical ab workout and the exercises presented here are probably not what you are used to. It may be hard to believe that you can develop six pack abs without doing your regular abdominal targeting exercises, but with this total body approach, you will train your entire body, boost your metabolism, and torch the stubborn belly fat that is covering up your hidden six pack. You can defeat your stubborn belly fat and crappy genetics by not following the herd and training smarter and not repping yourself into oblivion doing useless crunches and sit-ups.

Here's to your new six pack!

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About the Author

Jamin Thompson is an internationally recognized fat loss expert, fitness model, motivational speaker, and sports performance expert. He is the author of the best selling six pack abs e-book, The 6 Pack Secret: Fat Burning Secrets of The World’s Top Fitness Models.

He offers men and women from all over the world the best ab workouts for six pack abs without using bogus supplements, gimmicks, or crash dieting.