Bodybuilding Interview on How to Get Abs with Mike Geary

Because getting abs is such a hot topic, I decided to interview one of the top experts on the subject, best selling fitness author and abs expert Mike Geary.

In this interview, I not only ask him about how to get abs, but also, I ask him about his success as a trainer and author for those of you who are in these professions.

With that being said, here is my interview with Mike Geary.

HR:Hello Mike, how are you?

MG:I'm doing great Hugo, thank you.

HR: Thank you so much for taking some of your very valuable time to do this interview with us.

MG: No, thank you for inviting me.

HR: Ok Mike, I have a lot of fitness professionals who visit my site. For their benefit, could you please tell us how you got started as a fitness author? Did you have any prior experience in the field of health and fitness?

MG: I’ve been working as a Personal Trainer for over 10 years now and as a Certified Nutrition Specialist for about 5 years. I’ve been studying fitness and nutrition actually since I was a teenager. It was always a big interest of mine growing up.

I got started as a fitness author by publishing my best-selling ebook "The Truth About Six Pack Abs” online back in 2004. The reason I decided to write the book is that working as a trainer, I’d estimate that 90% of the questions I got in the gym were always about how to lose stomach fat or get six pack abs. I just knew that this was a topic that most people were confused about, and I wanted to set the record straight in my book.

HR: Great story Mike. So OK, you are the Abs Expert. What are the best tips you can give us on how to get abs? I'm sure all of my readers would like to know.

MG: Well, I could write a whole book on that topic… oh wait, I did! I’ll try to summarize some main points here that I think are vitally important:

1. Stop focusing on so many direct abs exercises (crunches, situps, leg raises, etc) and focus 95% of your time and energy in the gym on full-body multi-joint exercises such as squats, lunges, deadlifts, clean & presses, one-arm snatches and swings, upper body presses (overhead press, chest press, pushups, dips), and upper body pulls (rows, pulldowns, pull-ups, etc). The full body exercises stimulate a much better metabolic response (fat burning hormones as well as more caloric burn) compared to abs-specific exercises. Plus, most full body exercises work your core muscles to a good extent anyway.

2. When it comes to nutrition, try to eliminate as much processed food as possible and focus almost entirely on foods that are only 1 ingredient. So this means eggs, nuts, seeds, fruits, veggies, meats from healthy animals (grass-fed meats, pasture raised), beans, etc. Stop falling for food labels on processed foods that claim to be healthy but are really junk foods in disguise. Stick to 1-ingredient foods and it’s hard to go wrong.

3. Getting six pack abs means getting to super-lean body fat levels. This generally means that most people will need to “step-up” their workout intensity to get to the next level (we’re looking for single-digit body fat for men and between 15-18% for women). I like to incorporate more high intensity training such as all-out wind sprints (if you’re advanced) and high intensity interval training. Keep in mind that interval training doesn’t have to be done on a treadmill or elliptical… in fact, try spicing up your interval training with a jump rope or even a rowing machine.

HR: Mike, great tips! Needless to say, I agree with every single one of them. As you said, it takes a combination of things to get abs; it's not a matter of just taking a pill or buying an ab machine. With that said, what are the biggest mistakes people make when attempting to get abs?

MG: The biggest mistakes are:

Abs Mistake 1: Wasting time by doing too many ab exercises. Abs-specific exercises don’t need to be more than about 5 minutes of your entire workout routine. As I mentioned earlier, focus 90-95% of your time and energy on full-body multi-joint exercises done in high intensity fashion

Abs Mistake 2: Falling for ab belts and ab contraptions (late night infomercials are notorious for these). Ab belts (or any ab gadgets for that matter) don’t stimulate fat loss at all. Therefore, they are fairly useless in your effort to get six pack abs.

Abs Mistake 3: Falling for fad diets that may lead to loss of lean muscle tissue. Remember that maintaining a good amount of lean muscle mass increases your metabolic rate and the amount of calories you burn at rest. Sometimes people follow fad diets which causes them to lose lean muscle mass and therefore reduce their resting metabolic rate. Focus on building/maintaining lean muscle mass and burning body fat becomes much easier.

Abs Mistake 4: Not eating enough dietary fat. It’s true… eating a diet too low in fat can reduce muscle building and fat burning hormones in your body. In fact, your body relies on adequate fat intake (particularly monounsaturated fat and saturated fat) for healthy testosterone production. Polyunsaturated fats are important too (after all, they are essential fats)… however, it’s important to make sure that your sources of polyunsaturated fats come from unprocessed foods such as nuts and seeds, and NOT from processed vegetable oils like soybean or corn oil (which are highly inflammatory and unhealthy to your body). My favorite healthy fat sources are: raw nuts and seeds, avocados, coconuts, virgin coconut oil (good source of healthy MCTs), extra virgin olive oil, chia seeds, organic eggs from free-roaming hens, and grass-fed meats.