If you spend hours scouring the web for tips on how to get abs or how to lose weight, today you are going to learn the simple strategies which most individuals in gyms around the world are totally overlooking.

If you have ambitions of achieving a solid six pack, you need to cover these three bases first:

1. The abs are three separate muscles, you must hit each rather than just one.

2. Ignore those who over-train their abs, this leads nowhere.

3. Focus on tensing the muscles at the top of each rep, in the same way you would on a bench press or a shoulder press. Do not simply go through the motions.

It is surprising how many individuals cannot tick all three of the boxes above. In fact, the first one throws an awful lot of people a curve ball. If you were to ask a thousand gym members which abs exercises they did as part of their routine, you would probably hear the same answers again and again. Crunches, sit ups, weighted crunches, and so on. But they are neglecting several key areas of their midsection with this approach.

By constantly hitting the upper abs, you end up with a very unbalanced six pack, one which clearly displays definition up top but visibly fades away after the first two muscles and displays no obliques at all.

Try hitting every single muscle in quick succession, such as the workout example below:

1. Crunches on a swiss ball x 20

2. Leg raise x 20

3. Knee-touch-crunches x 20

You will increase the burn significantly by doing this as a circuit instead of straight working sets. So move from one exercise to the next without pausing. You can stop for 2 minutes' rest when the round is over, i.e. when you have pushed out 60 reps.

Not only will this hit every single muscle within your abs, it will also kick-start fat burning to a whole new level due to the very high intensity of the session.

The main problem faced by a lot of men in the gym is that they simply find hitting their stomach muscles very boring. If they're honest with themselves, they'd rather be standing in front of the mirror doing biceps curls and military presses. However, providing any muscle group with a lackluster workout will result in half baked results.

While today's workout is most certainly a tough one, it does return results. If you are trying to learn how to get abs the number one rule is to adapt your program to ensure you are hitting every single muscle in the target area, rather than just doing the basic, most popular exercise. Should you train abs with weight? This is not really necessary if you are hitting the area effectively already. If you can do that, then you will see positive results in any muscle group.