XNick EdgeX’s BodyBlog

The mind and body are two of the most amazing things in this world, and the mind is what tells us what we can’t, can, and won’t do. A positive mind is key to a healthy lifestyle. When I step into the gym, I feed off of the energy of others and step back and take a glance at who is pushing themselves as far as they can go. I look at the guy on the bench putting up 305 on his 8th rep with all of his strength telling himself he can do it!..and he does. I look at the smaller guy curlin 50 lbs on his 10th rep saying to himslef "C’mon, c’mon! If you put your mind to it and psych yourself up to push it to the next level, you got it! If you say your going to do 10 reps on the chest press at 175, know you can do it, and will do it. Do not let failure be an option. I find that when I am on the last rep and pushing that weight as hard as I can, I tell myself I can do it and will do it, I think about how hard I’ve worked to get to this point and push that weight. It’s all in the mind, and if you stay positive and pro-active, you can achieve anything.

So here it is, I have received many PM’s, and comments asking me about my diet and ab routine. Bottom line is it is all about consistency, inside and outside of the gym. Diet has more to do with getting those abs to show than the actual ab routines. Stick to a high protein, moderate carb, low fat diet. Eliminate all sugary sodas, juices, and alcohol since these all go straight to the abdomen. My current diet consists of the following foods: Chicken, tuna, lean beef, whole grain rice, oats, low sodium turkey, light whole wheat bread, light n fit Dannon yogurt, bananas, Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, Pure Protein 19g Protein bar, sweet potatoes, eggs, organic black beans and veggies. I also take 2 protein shakes a day, 1 pre-workout, and 1 post workout. You can buy Lean Pro Matrix at nlnutrition.net. These are all of the foods that are in my diet as of right now and have been for the past 6 months. It’s pretty strict, but it does the job for putting on lean mass, keep the portion control in check.

My ab routine consists of training my abs 5 days a week intensely, some may say this is overtraining, but I dis-agree, in my opinion you can train abs everyday. I train my abs for 30\45 minutes a day on top of weight training. I take White Flood, Purple Wraath, Blue Up, Orange Traid and Green Bulge to give me the energy I need to complete my routines, as well as keeping my body from going into catabolic state. For instance Monday I will do 4 sets of leg lifts at 15 reps each, then weighted ab machine crunches at 4 sets of 30 at 70-80 lbs, decline crunches at 4 sets of 30 reps, and last but not least cable crunches (my favorite), this exercise really got my abs to pop..I do 2 sets of 40 at 50 lbs, and then another 2 sets of 40 at 60 lbs, adding a twist here and there to get those obliques, not only on this exercise, but on all ab exercises, and switch it up a bit doing these in differrent order every day.

Cardio is also very important when getting those abs to show, it keeps off that extra layer of fat. Currently I am running every other day for 15 mins intensely at the end of a workout. I do not want to over do it with the cardio since I am still trying to put on muscle mass, so I keep it limited, this seems to be enough to keep of that extra layer of fat nobody wants, let’s not forget, weight training also burns calories.

Shoot me a message if you have any other questions,

Thank you all,

XNick EdgeX