Getting six pack abs can be a challenge. Many people spend hours a week on the treadmill yet have little to show for it. If that’s you, then these tips can help you turbocharge your workout, burn off that abdominal fat, and actually spend less time at the gym.

The number one mistake people make when doing aerobic exercise is working out at a steady state. Often, people start running on a treadmill or exercising on an elliptical trainer for 20-30 minutes. When they get no results, they simply crank up the difficulty level on the treadmill or they extend the length of their aerobic workout.

Yet if you work out at a constant pace, you will often find that even after going 60 minutes a day, 6 days a week, your abdominal fat just won’t burn off.

The problem is that when we exercise at a steady state, our bodies adjust to the level of difficulty, and any fat burning is minimized. In order to increase the rate of fat loss, you need to mix up your aerobic routine and continually keep your body guessing.

To do this, try interspersing periods of high intensity exercise with periods of lower intensity exercise. You can run (or work out on the the elliptical trainer) for 1 minute at a low intensity and then go all-out for 30 seconds. Repeat this cycle 5-7 times and include 5 minutes to warm up and 5 more minutes to cool down.

The whole routine should take you 20 minutes or less, and you really only need to do it for 2-3 days a week. As always, make sure you warm up properly beforehand, and check with your doctor before you start the program – especially if you have any history of heart problems.

In addition to this aerobic exercise, add resistance training (weight lifting) for an even bigger metabolic boost. I recommend looking into slow lifting. There is an excellent book on the subject titled The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution, by Frederick Hahn and Michael and Mary Dan Eades. In this book, they describe how you can work out for 30 minutes a week and see incredible results, both in terms of muscle gain and weight loss.

The combination of variable rate aerobic exercise and slow lifting can yield great results. You can burn fat faster than ever before, build muscle, get ripped abs, and look great – all while spending only a couple hours a week at the gym.