🏋 2 abs exercises to help your six-pack

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Here’s what’s on tap in this edition:

• Two exercises you can use to build a six-pack

• Five advantages of doing the trap bar deadlift

• The financial burden of a bodybuilding champion’s diet

Training Tips

Two of a Kind

With a million and one books, videos, and articles about ab training, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between reality and fever dreams involving oiled-up six packs.

Luckily, BarBend senior writer Jake Dickson is here to explain the simple anatomy of the abdominal muscles and give you the only two exercises you really need to build those diced-up abs. 

Along with the exercises themselves comes a harsh dose of reality: you need to eat right if you want to pull back the curtain of fat and see the Wizard of Abs hiding behind. If you just read on and learn to really hit your abs hard in training, you can be more confident that all the work you’re doing in the kitchen will have the intended effect.

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Exercise Selection

Lifting in the Trap House

With the profuse gushing of the internet, which has lavished on the deadlift in the 21st century, it is a strange feature of the modern world that trap bars remain one of the most controversial items in the gym.

Let the tutorial below be the first to open your eyes to the strange diamond-shaped bar at the heart of the vitriol. Easier to learn than a straight-bar deadlift and with great carry-over to most sporting endeavors, the trap bar deadlift should be a shining ray of light in your life instead of the forever-cursed object you’ve been told it is. 

Nobody ever talks trash about heavy farmer’s walks, and what is a trap bar deadlift other than a static version of that staple? With an upright posture and significantly more leg activation, the trap bar can get you moving weight up and down off the ground faster, safer, and heavier than its more renowned straight bar cousin. Bone up on (what should be) an essential lift, and leave your prejudices at the door.

Bodybuilding

A Champion’s Worth

At his peak, three-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler was comic-book big. With seemingly impossible dimensions, he looked like the kind of invention a supervillain would shoot into the sky to block out the sun to destroy the earth’s food supply.

While that mechanism isn’t quite right, the amount of food Cutler needed to eat to achieve his improbable physique makes you wonder how in the world there was enough left to feed the rest of the human race. His dedication to maxing out his size while staying lean extended to spending what amounts to the median household income of an average American on the food he needed to ply his craft. 

It’s all part of the champion’s mindset that has made Cutler a legend in the sport of bodybuilding.

Everything Else

Your Elliptical Buyer’s Guide

• This home elliptical buying guide will help you sort out the myriad options you now face when looking at buying your favorite piece of low-impact cardio equipment.

• Greens powders are a hot commodity for their potent mix of natural nutrients. Athletic Greens AG1 may sit atop the market, but these three alternatives provide cheaper and sometimes tastier options with all the same benefits.

• Several Italian teams broke hearts at the 2024 Paris Olympics for purely aesthetic reasons (such is often the curse of being from the boot), but the much-hyped weightlifting team’s apathetic turnout left fans breathless for very different reasons.