THE OG: Vince's 6 Week Abdominal Specialisation Course

Welcome back for a third instalment of Gironda on abs, as I take a look at his six-week specialisation course

Welcome back to THE OG, my series on all things Vince Gironda. I thought I’d continue the focus on abdominals with a look at Vince’s specialisation course on abdominal training, which he released as a pamphlet in the 1980s. I’m going to summarise and lay out the course for you so you can try it yourself if you want to.

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This manual presents information on the most controversial of all body parts—THE ABDOMINALS. There are more misconceptions concerning this muscle than any other one body part. Due to numerous requests for more information on training, Vince Gironda has compiled his findings from thirty-five years of applied use. Vince Gironda can be considered as one of the World’s Foremost Authorities on Physical Culture. The following pages, written by a man who is a leader in the body building profession, properly applied, can be worth a King’s ransom in your quest for treasure—THE PERFECT BODY (“Preface” to Vince Gironda’s Six-Week Abdominal Course)

Vince released a number of pamphlets in his career, from Definition, which focused on how he got into the best contest-ready shape of his life using the 8x8 and the steak-and-eggs diet, to his Six-Week Abdominal Course, which will be the focus today.

The Six-Week Abdominal Course does exactly what it says on the tin: it provides you with a six-week course that focuses on abdominal development. The course is supposed to function as an addition to or part of a broader regimen of weight training. You’re not supposed to do abdominal exercises only for six weeks (obviously).

The course is not intended for absolute beginners. If you remember what I said last week in the first of the two instalments on abdominal training Gironda-style, you’ll know that Vince believed beginners shouldn’t train abs at all. For beginners, according to Vince, general training, and especially compound movements, is enough to stimulate the abdominals. Only later, after the bodybuilder has gained some experience, should they then start to train abdominals specifically.

Much of the 23 pages of the booklet covers material we looked at in the first of last week’s two instalments on abdominal training Gironda-style—from his insistence that the abdominals should be trained like any other muscle, to his claim that sit-ups and leg raises are inferior exercises for training the abdominals—so if you want to go over, in detail, the fundamentals of Vince’s approach to training abdominals, I’d suggest you revisit that essay.

For those who want to know the basics of the Gironda approach without going into detail, I’ve reproduced the crib sheet Vince includes right at the very beginning of the pamphlet. This actually includes some points that he doesn’t raise in The Wild Physique; for example, the bit about physique champions not training their abs before a contest. As far as I’m aware, this pamphlet was written at around about the same time as The Wild Physique—1984—or possibly after. The crib sheet is right at the end of this essay.

Now, the six-week course consists of six one-week regimens to be performed one after the other, in order. Each regimen contains a different exercise or exercises, which Vince describes in detail. I’ve reproduced the images from the pamphlet so you can see the detailed instructions, and because I like the drawings Vince did of the exercises. Some weeks, such as week two include different exercises depending on the practitioner’s skill level. Weeks five and six are based around the same difficult exercise—the shoulder planche.

The aim is to perform the exercises in the standard Gironda fashion, with short rests between sets and hyperventilation to ensure the body’s oxygen debt is repaid as much as possible between sets. Vince maintained that, when performing abdominal exercises, you should rest for the absolute minimum length of time necessary to regain your breath enough to continue. A properly trained practitioner might even end up performing abdominal exercises in aerobic fashion, with little to no rest at all, to really get the cardiovascular system pumping.

Vince included a diet to go along with the specialisation program, his famous “Maximum Definition” diet, otherwise known as the “steak-and-eggs” diet, for obvious reasons (you eat steak and eggs and not much else). This diet, which is a kind of ketogenic diet, is intended to strip away fat quickly and easily, without the need for calorie-counting. Remember what Vince said about the importance of diet to abdominal definition: you can’t spot-reduce belly fat by doing abdominal exercises—you have to lose weight through dieting and intense cardiovascular exercise. In due time I’ll talk at length about Vince’s special diets, including the Maximum Definition diet.

Sp let’s look at the special six-week programme in detail.