Training For Exceptional Abs

God bless you all in the brand new year of 2005!

Hope you all have had wonderful holidays and have enjoyed yourselves, spent time with family, training and having a great life. I'm not big on resolutions, but I am big on goals. I hope you've all had time to reflect and decide if you're life in general and especially your training is going where you want it to go. I don't think resolutions have the strength to help you get the job done in being the best you can be. But serious goals backed up with commitment and planning do. The New Year is a great time to take a few moments to decide what you want to accomplish in the future. I suggest you all do it. Don't come up with a, "Well my New Year's resolution is to lose a few pounds," or "Make a couple more bucks," or "Pray a little more," or "See my kids a little more." Those things fall too easily by the wayside. Come up with concrete achievable goals that are specific and have a plan to back them up. Decide on things that actually matter enough to you to follow through with your plan to get them done.

Everybody in general wants to achieve the three or four things that I just said as resolutions. Get in better shape, make more money, whatever the case may be. But what most people don't tell you is that they want those things without having to do anything else to achieve them. This is where the waters of accomplishment get deep and the men get separated from the boys. Let me set something straight for you; if you don't want whatever your goal is badly enough to work for it then you don't really want it. You might accept it if it fell off of a truck into your lap, but if it takes real effort to get it and you're not willing to do it, then you don't really want it. The goal that you are most likely to accomplish in your life is the thing that truly matters the most to you.

I hear people talk about motivation all of the time. One of the common questions is, "How do you motivate someone?" Well guess what? You might trip the switch some how that unlocks a motivation already inside of someone, or you might get them briefly excited to accomplish a task that is at hand, but if they don't truly desire whatever you are trying to motivate them to do to begin with, you can't motivate them. And you can't waste your life trying to instill a desire in someone that they don't want. You can infect someone with your enthusiasm and you can inspire the confidence to accomplish something, but it must be their decision to truly want their goal. When you are deciding your goal, learn to truly search yourself out for what you want to accomplish and decide how badly you want to accomplish it. This will lead you to goals that are truly right for you.

For now be thinking about what you really want. Break it down into specifics. In our next newsletter we'll give some more tips on getting to your goals. Remember that everything in your life is more easily focused, productive and happy when you are spiritually at peace. That is accomplished by accepting Jesus Christ as savior.

DONATIONS FOR VICTIMS OF THE TSUNAMI

We have made a donation through the Red Cross for the victims of the tsunami, which hit Asia. We suggest that anyone, who can, do the same or donate to some reputable charity of your choice.

www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

This is by far probably the greatest natural disaster tragedy of the modern age, but there is always hope. Even when disaster strikes there is always available the peace and love of God. Anyone who receives this newsletter who has been personally affected by the loss of a loved one or in some other direct way has our deepest sympathy. Let us not forget to pray for them.

Already stories are coming out of people who miraculously survived. I also believe that this will serve to show that countries may hate each other as well as factions and philosophies and any of the other entanglements to the mind of man, but the average man does not hate his brother. Aid has been poured out from all over the world and will continue to be to help the people that may live 12,000 miles away whom we've never seen. If everyone in the world was as tied up hating each other as governments and religions are then no one would ever receive help in their time of need. The average man be he American, Arab, African, Asian, or whatever is far too busy with his own day to day life to go above and beyond to specifically hate anyone from another country. It's only when we allow ourselves to be swept into those ideas of hate by whatever other group we might belong to besides the human race that idiotic things like genocide, and terrorism occur.

Here's a chance for all of us to connect with the rest of the world to help our brothers. Please do what you can.

IN AN EFFORT TO FURTHER EXTEND THIS and to help as much as we possibly can, we're going to have a sale for the next week. We're not going to discount anything, but WE ARE GOING TO DONATE 25% OF EVERYTHING WE SELL FOR THE NEXT WEEK TO RELIEF FOR THOSE HIT BY THIS TRAGEDY. We in no way intend for this to be a crass effort to capitalize on something as unbelievably devastating as this has been. But this and our prayers are the best we can do to help right now.

If you intended to patronize our store this week anyway, or if you thought about it, know that if you do it now 25% of your purchase will go to help those devastated by this tragedy.

God bless those of you who do what you can to minister to those in need.

A COUPLE MORE FRIENDS OF MINE I'D LIKE YOU TO PRAY FOR

My friend Pavel Tsatsouline had a family member, his brother-in-law, diagnosed with cancer in the last week or so. People have already been praying and from what I understand they've gotten some good news and believe he will be able to fight it. However let's add our continued prayer for them. May the Lord work powerfully in their lives.

Also Bryce Lane, a fine gentleman who has a great website and discussion board with really interesting hardcore information on it, asked for prayer through his discussion forum for a couple of his friends. His friends, Steven and Sarah Short, 2 year old son drowned New Year's Day. Let's pray for them in what must be an extremely intense time of need. May the Lord comfort them.

TRAINING TIP

It's a good idea to always start your workout with an abdominal exercise. Why?

Because most lifters, by the time they get through with the big intense exercises, the last thing on their mind is doing some extra sit-ups. If you start with it first it doesn't adversely effect your workout, it gives you a good warm up and in the end you end up with stronger abdominals over all because when you've already worked them, every exercise you do becomes more intense for the rest of the workout.

Now I am NOT Mr. Six-Pack Abs. I'm not particularly interested in dieting to the level necessary to show that, because that's exactly what that is. a show. Your abs can look great and still be weaker than pond water. I want abs that are powerful! Just like everything else. And my abs ARE powerful, because I train them for that specific purpose.

Here are some tips on ab training:

1. Structure your workout for greatest overall efficiency and total body unity. That means, use heavy movements that force your abs to fire simply by their performance. Read squats, deadlifts, overhead presses. Especially read heavy partial squats, deadlifts and overhead presses. The performance of these exercises forces the muscles of the torso to function in unison with the prime muscle movers of the body. By doing that you create strong abs that can work in unison with the rest of your body.

2. Train them heavy just like the rest of the body. If you want to get beyond simply being able to do repetitive high reps of simply bodyweight exercises (crunches, sit-ups, leg lifts, etc.,) then you've got to add weight to these exercises. Heavy weighted sit ups for low reps are an excellent power builder.

3. Train off-center. Using one-armed exercises is one of the greatest ways to overload your abdominals. By shifting the resistance to one side at a time you force your abs to work twice as hard to stabilize the body than they would if you're using a balanced resistance. Some excellent movements here; One arm overhead presses, windmills, suitcase style deadlifts, barrel shouldering, one-shoulder quarter squats, one arm partial overhead lockouts and squats.

4. Train them Twisted Conditioning-style. Ha-ha. Shameless self promo. Actually what I mean is to mix your training and don't go overboard with any particular volume of one style. Do some high reps and low reps. Do some bodyweight and weighted work. Do some barbell and odd object lifting. Use some alternative conditioners centered around the abs. Kettlebells, Indian Clubs, Sledgehammer swinging, shovel lifting, etc. Mix them in with heavy work, mix them in with conditioning work. Sometimes work them first, sometimes work them last, sometimes work them in the middle. Do the heavy work first, then the endurance work, then switch around and do it backwards. By using this methodology we create the most complete development of the abdominals that can function in the most ways. To me, that's the ultimate goal.

DON'T FORGET

For the next week, we're donating 25% of all of our sales to the relief efforts for the Asian Tsunami Disaster.

Forward this newsletter to a friend and tell them to sign up for it.

Visit the forum on our site and join up.

Get your goals ready for the new year.

Pray for our world and Pavel's family and Bryce's friends.

Train your abs. it's one of the major keys to real strength.

If you want to learn how to squat check out our book and video. www.strongerman.com/how900.html
If you want to learn how to put your program together for the greatest strength and endurance, check out Twisted Conditioning. www.strongerman.com/twisted.html
If you want to learn how to lift the wild strongman stuff, check out our Odd Object series. www.strongerman.com/odd_object.html
If you want to learn about conditioning, check out the Alternative Conditioning Series. www.strongerman.com/alternative_cond.html

Lift a heavy barbell and strive to be a better man. Lift something odd and have fun with your family. Do a little conditioning and then you can probably eat dessert... if your wife gives you permission.

Again, God bless you all.