The Romano Factor

As cliché as it sounds, a lot of us really do use the new year to tighten up our diets, bring the intensity back up a few notches in the gym, and in general undo all that the holidays have done to us and set course for summer’s pool parties and beach days. So, what better time of year to bring you our official fat-loss issue? But this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill platform to give you a bunch of junk you already know. We’re taking it a step further this year and giving you a science-packed issue that addresses everything from diet and nutrition to supplementation and training to optimize the chance that you’ll be hitting springtime sporting a well-chiseled six-pack.

I’m going to say it here, but you will also come to realize this all throughout the issue: Fat loss is the imperative goal you must seek if you’re ever going to see any detail in the muscle you’ve built. This is more imperative in the abdominal area than anywhere else. Of all the muscles in your body, abs are the most diet-dependent when it comes to seeing them. You can be at 9 or 10 percent body fat and still have impressive arms, chest, shoulders, back, and legs, but you still have to get down at least 5 percent or so for your abs to look impressive.

An old friend once coined the phrase, “85 percent of your abs are in the kitchen.” This guy was a stark raving lunatic on all fronts, but in this case, he was right on the money. You can train your abs until the cows come home, but if you’re eating like a cow, you’ll never see the fruits of your labour. So, you’ll notice we’ve paid a lot of attention to diet in this issue with an emphasis on the kind of fat loss you need to draw out the details of all your hard training—especially your abs.

Behind the Fat Is Where Your Abs Are At
Everyone has abs. They’re in there; you couldn’t stand up without them. For many people, that’s all the proof they’re ever going to get that they exist because they’re never going to see them, no matter how hard they work them. That’s because they don’t diet off the fat. You could never work your abs a day in your life and still have a six-pack if you got lean enough. So, while the workout I’m giving you is certainly sound enough, it’s not going to be worth the ones and zeros its made out of unless you diet and do enough cardio to coax your abs out of hiding.

The Overtraining Trick
What happens to muscles that are over trained? They shrink. Now, why would a bodybuilder, who ostensibly wants a tiny waist, be beefing it up with heavy weighted ab exercises, in the 6- to 8-rep range, once a week? The truth is, he doesn’t. Ab exercises are generally very high-rep sets to failure with little to no weight except body weight, and they’re done three to five days a week or more. Would you train any other muscle like that? No, because they’d be overtrained. Just your abs. Why? Because you want them overtrained. 1950s bodybuilder Irvin “Zabo” Koszewski, aka “The Chief,” had arguably the best abs in the world, even by today’s standards. He actually had a 10-pack. When I knew him in World Gym in Venice in the 1980s, he was still doing 1,000 ab movements a day. You want great abs? Overtrain them.

The Mind-Muscle Connection
Anatomy and bodybuilding go hand in hand. You have to know the muscle you’re working: what it does, where it originates, and where it inserts. Once you understand your own biomechanics, your training changes from simply doing a sit-up where you just lift your torso to performing a calculated and collected movement set into a range of motion that will yield the maximum contraction at the top of the move. It will be like that for every muscle you train. And it will be then that you see the most progress.