Hi guys, with this post, I commit for the two objectives I fixed for myself for the end of 2018: Get six pack abs Learn to speak and to understand chinese (mandarin). For your info, I am not fat, but I'm still far away to have visible abs muscles. I started going to the gym 2 times per week three weeks ago. Also, with learning Mandarin, I'm starting from zero. Now, I need some help. Does one of you have a six pack and can give me good advices on which exercises are most helpful to grow my muscles? Secondly, does someone speak mandarin? If so, I would be glad to trade french or german lessons for mandarin lessons. If someone wants to join one of these challenges, feel free to share here. I will be sharing my progress on this thread. Thanks for reading! Miste
Chinese is really complicated, but on nofap, just like on NZT, you can do anything. Why are you pursuing this dream, being able to speak Mandarin Chinese?
Great job on starting to go to the gym. I'd say go up to 3 times per week, later on move up to 4 (every other day). First and most important tip: You don't crunch your way to abs. You reduce your body fat percentage to make them visible. Exercises to strengthen your abdominal muscles are reverse crunches, leg raises, crunches on the machine, mountain climbers and so on. Fix your diet and do compound exercises (bench, squats), to burn the most calories. Good luck!
Because It is one of the most spoken languages in the world and I'm very interested in the chinese culture. I know that it is a difficult challenge, but I want to give it a try. Thanks for the advices. I've read a lot about getting abs in order to prepare myself for this challenge and indeed, I saw that the most important part was to loose the body fat to make them visible. I will drastically change my eating habits (reduce alcohol, prepare every meal myself, stop eating snacks between meals...) to make it possible.
Hi guys, here you find a little update on my objectives: For the abs, I joined a Bodypump class last sunday, I know it's not gonna make my muscles grow, but it will probably make me loose the fat that covers them ;-). I also started to look for mandarin lessons, I will probably subscribe for a class starting in January.
Abs are built in the gym and revealed in the kitchen. If you don't have any ab muscles, you WILL need to build some, or you certainly won't have a "six pack" no matter how lean you get. (Here's an example of what someone with no real ab muscle development will look like when they're lean enough for their abs to show: https://atulmalla.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/day-1.jpg ) Once you do have ab muscles, you need to get very lean for them to show. You need to be in the 10-12% body fat range to really see your abs fully. That's the kind of lean you see in Hollywood movies etc, i.e. not just "not fat", but actually lean. If you want to lose fat, it's simple. Track your calorie intake. Get into a caloric deficit. Aim to lose 1-2lbs of fat per week. Take daily weigh ins (in the morning before you've eaten or drank anything) and then each week take a weekly average from those numbers and compare it to the last week. If you lost less than 1lb, decrease your daily calories. If you lost more than 2lbs, increase your daily calories by a little. Depending on how much fat you're carrying currently, the process will be different. If you're quite lean already, I'd suggest bulking for a few months to build up your abs (and other muscles) and then cutting down to 10-12% so you can actually see them. If you're a higher body fat % (doesn't even have to be fat - but not lean basically) then I recommend cutting down to 10-12% first, and then very very slowly bulking at a small deficit so that you can gain abs while staying relatively lean year round. (bulking at a higher body fat percentage is counter-productive since you gain less muscle, and then have to diet/cut for ridiculously long afterwards to get lean, during which time you can easily lose your gains)
Hi, Thanks a lot for your useful and very interesting answer. Currently I'm arround 15% of body fat. I think I need to change my strategy and start bulking before loosing the last fat %.
