From Sparticus’ corpus to Cristiano Ronaldo’s chiselled abs, there’s a reason six-packs have become known as ‘sex packs’.
But how to get one of your own?
There are already thousands of articles on the ‘myths’ you need to bust and the foods you need to eat to get top-notch abdominals. While there’s some value to this, much of it is overblown.
So rather than pretend abs are made in the kitchen (they may be revealed there, but it’s certainly not where you build them), today we’re going to give you a no-fuss guide to your physical cheese-grating.
Enter: Peter O’Reilly, a mobility specialist and online fitness and nutrition coach, who recently took to Instagram with a series of exercises designed to get you the perfect six-pack. No over promises, no short cuts; just honest activities that – if you keep at them – will have you looking like Brad Pitt in fight club.
Sweat is the secret.
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To work your Serratus Anterior (the muscles just under your pecs) Peter advises you do the pushup plus (essentially just a pushup but pushing your upper back towards the ceiling at the end), straight arm pulldowns and cable deltoid raises.
Bonus points if you add free weights to your push-ups too, a la Chris Hemsworth.
To work on your external obliques he recommends you do side bends, Russian twists, cable twists and elbow to knee tucks. On the flipside, the internal obliques can be boosted with planks, glute bridges and quadrupled lifts.
Moving on to the upper rectus abdominis (the upper abs, also known as the bit you always accidentally work when you are trying to work lower down), Peter says sit ups, crunches and ab wheel rollouts are all options.
As for the lower rectus abdominis (the lower abs), to target this area you can try hanging knee raises, mountain climbers, reverse crunches, scissors and lying leg raises.
His final words of advice aren’t too bad either, with Peter reminding you that to achieve the perfect six pack you need to be lifting weights, engaging in HIIT training and reducing your overall body fat percentage.