My Six Pack Journey (I'm REALLY proud of myself!)

Hey!

Hows it going? First of all I'd like to apologise for not updating this blog sooner. Things have been CRAZZZZY busy for me over the last few months both personally and professionally so I promise to update more frequently from now on.

But hey, enough of that, I just wanted to share my Six pack journey with you that I've just been on over the last few months.

Let me put you in the picture as to why I decided to go on a quest for six pack abs:

At the start of this year, my goals were very different. I placed a huge emphasis on improving my endurance running. I have 2 epic challenges that I want to do soon which partly involve endurance running so my main fitness goal was to improve on my distance running. This was one of the reasons why I went to Club La Santa, Lanzarote in June - to get some mileage in my legs, take part in a couple of races and basically lock myself away and just focus on my own training.



The last few months have been crazy busy for me. My Bootcamp and personal training business have literally been "blown up!" (thanks to my business mentor Paul Mort). My Sevenoaks Bootcamps are now thriving with positive action takers, I'm about to open another Bootcamp in Tonbridge and I'm now in the position where I only train people on a 1-2-1 basis who I want to train. Its invite only.

And I'm now ALSO working with fellow fat loss expert Nisha Obaidullah on our new sixpack abdominals programme (for fit pro's and general members of the public who want their abs back!) which Im really excited about and is the reason why I embarked on my own six pack journey.

As myself and Nisha are spearheading the challenge then it's only right that we're kept accountable and practising what we're preaching. I personally believe that there are WAY too may fat unhealthy personal trainers out there in the industry giving out "health" advice to their clients that blatantly can't do it themselves.

So I decided from June onwards to change my fitness goals slightly and focus 100% on obtaining a six pack.

Now don't get me wrong, Ive always been lean and have always had bit of a sixpack but never what I call, a proper one! Never one that was visible even when I wasn't tensing! Never a six pack that was truly outstanding so I decided that I was gonna get A KICK ASS sixpack just like the male fitness models on the front cover of Mens Health! Hell if those 'goons' could get one then I could DEFINITELY do it :-)

So my goal would change from endurance running (at the start of the year) to training purely for aestetics for the next few months, and at the end of it I'd book myself in for a professional photo shoot to show off the abs ;-)

Once I decided what my goal was, I made sure I planned 100% for it. I would be following my Elimiation Diet to the letter so I made sure I had all the clean, allowable foods in my cupboards. I made sure I knew what I was going to eat (and at what time) for the weeks ahead and I made sure I planned ALL my workouts in at the start of the week aswell. I put the workouts in my diary and I made sure I was 100% committed to doing EVERY single one of them, no BULLSH*T!

One of the things I found VERY hard during my Six pack journey and that was eating out with friends and family. I usually associate eating out with "pleasure" and normally when I eat out, I like to have a few beers and a dessert (cheesecake is my achilles heel!)so I did find it difficult at times resisting the temptation, especially when my deer Dad was tucking into a dessert or if at the cinema, my buddies munching on popcorn, BUT I stayed strong, my will power was good and I didn't cave in.



I'd like to point out something important here about Willpower, something that my mentor told me which REALLY hit home with me and that is:

"If you're WHY is strong enough then WILLPOWER doesn't come into it."

This basically means if you know EXACTLY what your goal is, you know WHEN you want to achieve it by, you know HOW you're going to do it and you know WHY you want to do it then WILLPOWER doesn't even come into it!

In my case, my goal was to be SHREDDED by September (so I had a deadline!), I knew how I was going to do it, I would be following my Elimination Diet 100% without fail no excuses and training 6 days a week. I'd also be adopting an Eat Stop Eat lifetyle during my journey aswell. The reason that I was doing this (so my WHY!!) was because I wanted sixpack abs.

I made sure my WHY was strong enough before I started this journey, I made sure my goal was 100% crystal clear before I started. If I didnt do this then I dont think I would have got the results that I did.

FINAL RESULTS

So since I embarked on my Sixpack journey (starting from June)

my bodyfat levels have gone from 10% down to 8%,
My sixpack is more visable,
I've gone from a 32 inch waist to a 30!
and I feel and look sooo much more leaner than before!

Below is my Before & After pictures:



I'm REALLy proud of myself for achieving my sixpack goal. It wasn't all plain sailing. There were times when I thought I wasn't gonna do it but I stayed strong, I kept focused, I had my photo shoot done and I got the result I wanted.

What next for me? well, Im gonna get back into my endurance running and refocus my attention on my 2 endurance challenges for next year that I want to do. Can't say too much at this point but lets just say that they'll be a huge challenge for me!

I hope my story and pictures inspire you to achieve the fat loss goals that you deserve.

Onto the next challenge!

Peace out :-)

Sam Winkworth
CPT, SPN

PS - I'll be uploading all my pictures from the photo shoot I had done last week so keep 'em peeled. They look pretty awesome if I dont say so myself! Sorry if that sounded big headed, I dont mean it to be, its just that Im SUPER proud of myself for achieving these results :-)

PPS - If you're interested in the detailed nutrition plan and the exact daily workouts that I used to achieve my six pack goal then get yourself over to my facebook page, add me as a buddy and keep an eye out for mine and Nisha's six pack 6 week challenge details. The results are unbelieveable ;-)

The Interesting Search For Female Six Pack Abs

This week's post is from my good buddy Tristan Lewis over in America. I met Tristan back in November when I went to a fitness conference in Disneyworld, Orlando, and since then we hit it off and have kept in touch since.

Tristan is a great guy and I love his fitness philosophy which is very similar to mine.

Okay, handing you over to Tristan now. hope you enjoy the guest post.

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Firstly, I want to say hi, my name is Tristan Lewis from MaverickFitnessCoach.com and I’m really thrilled to be working alongside my good mate Sam Winkworth to bring you new and exciting fitness, fat loss and body transformation advice. Sam is an outstanding trainer and a great friend and what he offers his clients and customers is cutting edge advice – but you all know that of course!

This is probably aimed more at the ladies today, but I’ll make up for it with something for the guys next – so today I’d like to discuss the idea that six pack abs are not just a male orientated desire and how women of all ages and current fitness levels should be training for and expecting this unique fitness aspect as part of their body transformation.

You see the reality is that women should not only be aiming for a small waist, or trim thighs and buns…but also a beautiful, feminine sculpted set of six pack abs - it’s real important to dismiss the stigma that abs are only for men and women should just focus on the ‘flat belly syndrome’. And here’s why…

The basic anatomical facts are that every human has ‘six pack abs’ – let’s use that term as our ‘keyword’ for a truly spectacular midsection. But these abs are typically covered by our bodyfat and that there is the issue with regards to actually seeing them.

We can break down abdominal training for men and women into two areas. One will be training for muscular development of the abs and all other muscles and the other training for fat loss to reveal not just the abs but sculpt your entire physique as well.

Women need to understand that firstly they’ll be very unlikely to create a visual appearance of ripped, rolling slabs of abdominal muscle – this simply will not be the case as genetically a woman carries less testosterone than a man and will not build the muscle like their male counterparts….BUT here’s where we need to continue and encourage all women to actually STILL concentrate on working out for that ‘female six pack abdominal appearance’.

Because whilst a woman can dismiss the fact right here that they’ll look like a man or have garish ab muscles, the idea of training for six pack abs puts them into the absolute correct exercise psychology of correct and proven fat loss and body transformation training.

You see of course it’s possible to set a goal of a nice lean tummy and firm thighs but the workouts you’d employ to achieve a stunning female physique with ‘six pack abs’ will REALLY be putting you into ‘full body transformation territory’ where fat is burned, muscle pathways are re-ignited and real physical change occurs.
What I’m saying is all women will genetically create their own unique look, their own slim, toned and tight body and midsection, but also their very own six pack abs. And the training that you attempt to get ‘six pack abs’ is the type of training that will deliver all the other aspects you are desiring in your new body image or transformation. It will not be just ‘six pack abs’ but a full body makeover.

An example is this:
I run my own Bootcamps called Intensity Bootcamps as well as training clients one on one. A majority of my current Bootcamps are ladies wanting to firstly lose body fat but secondly create a lean, toned and tight body. We had a discussion and around 70% told me they’d typically been in their gyms with the goal of a lean tight midsection and trim body firmly in place and the tools they were using were your typical long form cardio of 40 minutes plodding away on a treadmill or a cycle staring at the tv’s etc. I know you know what I mean, you see it all the time in most gyms.
Now it’s certainly not bad to do if you are concentrating on say running a marathon or for an endurance sport, but even then it’s worth mixing it up.

So I said to them, well look let me put you into this Bootcamp where the training will be exactly the same as what a man would do, with short burst intensity exercise, resistance circuits, explosive and reactive workouts – all designed to get you out the gym quicker but also to incorporate the resistance exercises to build lean muscle that in turn both sculpts and shapes your own particular fit female physique but burns more calories than simple long form cardio.

When I told them we’d be aiming to build lean muscle the initial reaction was ‘Whoa! – we don’t want big muscles or six pack abs like the guys train for.’

Now that ideology is common and perfectly understandable. BUT as we continued to discuss this I told them about the misconceptions in fitness training today that a woman is going to be threatened with bulky muscles if they lift weights or train like a ‘typical male counterpart’. This is fallacy. (The actual truth is all women should be training with resistance weight training as a major component of their routines for the very fact that it will burn more calories), it will create the lean and long muscles you wish for and it will give you the physique you are genetically meant to have.

And that is not big, muscular or bulky because unless you want to dabble in the world of steroids and excess testosterone you simply will not create that look – you simply won’t be able to.

So how does this philosophy all tie into the original topic of the search for female six pack abs. Well here it is:

I train all my female clients as I would any male client (ok, not in everything because some want to train for marathons or endurance sports etc and we change it up) but primarily I expect my lady clients to take up the same exact challenges as the guys because I’ll tell you this, in all honesty, I see the ladies I work with are so much more capable of doing more than they think they can it is almost unbelievable. I push them because ladies don’t seem to complain as much as some of the guys I work with (no offence men!) – I give them a challenge and they crush it!

Yes, maybe the next day at lunch or in the bar they chat with friends and say ‘Tristan got us doing this! Can you believe it!’ You know, but the fact remains they absolutely ‘kick butt’ as my American friends say.

And therefore I train them to develop FEMALE SIX PACK ABS because not only will this sort of training create strong core and supportive muscles and a midsection that is in optimal shape, but as we discussed further up, a woman, no matter what she thinks, will not develop garish six pack abs but the beautiful, lean feminine abs that a woman is capable of. The true ‘female six pack abs’; not just a small waist with weak floppy muscle underneath the skin, or nice hips and thighs still with a rounded back and loose abs….no – REAL solid feminine core musculature that will look stunning.
Of course the lower the body fat % the more you’ll see your abs. But physics has given women the same abs as men – the same muscles in your midsection – give or take- that a man has. If you were meant to have just a smooth, little tummy you’d only have one smooth muscle running down your core.

You –as a woman – deserve to show off your ‘six pack abs’ and trust me it will be a look you’ll adore as much as all the people staring at you!

Your training will consist of (full body intensity circuits, resistance training, body weight circuits and also a bit of cardio) if you still like all that – and it will be varied, enjoyable, challenging and exciting!

Ultimately you need to know that as a woman you SHOULD be training for ‘six pack abs’, you should rest safe in the knowledge you’ll not get bulky by training for such, and you need to trust that the workouts you do with Sam, with me or with any trainer who knows their stuff will transform your entire body into the type of feminine physique you see on magazine covers.

Nature’s given you a gift. (It’s up to you to train optimally and be proud to show yours off – it’s all in your mind and you are capable of anything you desire to put your mind to). So again: don’t think six pack abs is a keyword for men only – it is absolutely what you need to be training for as an integral part of your fitness program. Not just because it will offer support, structure, core strength and optimal performance but also because it will look incredible on you – mark my words – and it’s not as hard to achieve as you may have thought….

There is such a thing as Female Six Pack Abs – you’ve got them, now you just have to train them and allow them to be one of the key components in your full body transformation. You can do it! Believe me, I see it all day long with my clients.

Ladies are capable of a level of training that is phenomenal to observe.

Until next time, I wish you all the best and look forward to hearing from you and seeing how you’re doing.

Cheers all,
(Tristan Lewis
MaverickFitnessCoach.com)

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More posts from Tristan soon guys.

Train hard and be strong,

Sam

Fat Loss Abdominal Supersets

Alot of you have been asking me about abdominal exercises...

"When's the best time to train abdominals?
"What are the best exercises?"
"How often should I train them?"

are just some of the questions I get on this subject.

The answers?

"Any time is a good time (so long as you train them!), exercises that don't put pressure on your back are the best and training your abs three times a week is more than enough to get you results".

Training your abs THROUGHOUT the workout as part of a superset (instead of right at the end like you'll see in most health club programs) is a great way to burn belly fat.

The core muscles can become more and more fatigued as the workout progresses so performing your ab exercises throughout the workout can be a great way of avoiding "core fatigue" and impairing technique towards the end.

The best ab exercises are the ones that DON'T involve you lyeing on your back, curling your shoulder blades off the floor, or any type of movement that requires you to perform hundreds of situps whilst lyeing on the floor.

Exercises that will help you burn belly fat without placing stress on your lower back are by far the most effective.

Here are 4 of my favourite abdominal supersets that I use in my own personal program and with my clients as well.



That's a much better way of training your abs! Perform that workout 3 times a week and see how you go = >

Sam Winkworth
CPT, SPN