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Do you know anybody who does not wish to get rid of the fat on one particular area of their body? I have not met anybody like that!
“If I could only get rid of my big belly”! “Oh, I wish my thighs were slimmer”! Does it sound familiar?
Even skinny people are often unhappy with the excess fat in some areas of their body. We’ve all seen those skinny men with huge bellies!
This common problem is accompanied by a widespread belief that you can lose the fat on a “problem area” by exercising that particular area. Some people do hundreds of crunches in attempts to flatten their stomachs, others buy the “miracle” ab gadgets and bulky “hip slimming” machines from TV.
Were you about to call the 800 number to buy the “latest and greatest” ab roller?
Hold on to your hard-earned money!
The belief that you can lose fat on a specific part of your body by exercising that area is a myth! Targeting the “spots” of your body for fat loss is called “spot reducing”, and it simply does not work.
Exercising certain areas of your body will strengthen the muscles there, but it will not remove the fat from them. Your newly developed muscles will be hidden under the layer of fat.
What about those heavily pitched creams, wraps and rubber belts that supposedly “melt the fat away”? Those are just plainly scams.
The creams and body wraps can temporarily give your skin smoother appearance, but they will do absolutely nothing for fat loss. All kinds of weight loss belts, pants and other clothing will make you sweat, thereby causing some loss of water weight which is mistaken by most people for fat loss. But they will not help you lose even one gram of the actual fat!
There is no way to tell your body where exactly it should lose its fat.
Each person’s body has its own unique shape and fat distribution pattern. The places where the fat goes first are, unfortunately, where it comes off last. So the only way to lose that fat is by losing weight in general.
The only healthy permanent way to lose weight is by making lifestyle changes to incorporate healthy eating and increased activity. When you do that, the fat will come off everywhere on your body, including those “trouble spots”. And yes, you will then have that body that you always dreamed of!
Do you want a flat stomach? I don’t know a person who doesn’t!
People spend millions, if not billions of dollars, each year in the quest for a flat stomach. Right now there are about 200 or more ab exercise devices out there. There’s the ab do-it, the ab rock-it, the ab roller, the ab dolly, and so many more. You would think that with all of these amazing new products that most people would be walking around with that nice, lean mid-section they’ve always wanted. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Most, if not all of these products, will do little or nothing to flatten your stomach. And that’s because these exercise contraptions cannot eliminate the layer of fat that lies on top of your abs.
In order to be successful at thinning your waistline you must have a basic under standing of how the ab muscles function and how your body burns fat. The first thing that needs to be understood is the difference between fat and muscle. Fat is excess calories and is primarily stored in layers on top of muscle tissue. Muscle is made up of fibers that contract or shorten to produce movement. Fat cannot turn into muscle and muscle cannot turn into fat! However, you can lose muscle and you can gain fat. That’s what happens to most people.
So if your goal is to thin your waist line and have a nice flat stomach, the first thing you need to do is decrease / eliminate the layers of fat that are on top of your abs. We all have a flat stomach; it’s just some of oar’s are covered by excess fat.
The most effective way of flattening your stomach is a combination of strength training (with a extra focus on mid-section), cardiovascular exercise (short, hard workouts), and stable blood sugar (keeps you from adding additional fat and makes it easier for the body to use body fat for fuel).
1. You must do some form of progressive strength training
The primary function of the ab muscle is to flex your torso forward. However, there are also muscles that flex your torso to the side and muscles that rotate your torso. Often times you see people on their ab roller every day doing hundreds of crunches or sit-ups.
If you want to effectively strengthen your stomach you need to incorporate the following types of exercises:
• 1-2 forward flexion exercises (crunch, sit-up, etc.)
• 1-2 side flexion exercises (side bends, side crunches, etc.)
• 1-2 rotational exercises (trunk rotations, standing twists, etc.)
The abs, are muscles just like any other and should be worked at most 3 times per week. You also want to make sure you are training them progressively, working them harder each time.
2. Use short, hard cardio workouts to increase metabolism
Cardio workouts are important because they CAN, if done correctly, increase your metabolism for 4-24 hours or more! This means you are less likely to store any excess calories as body fat because they are more likely to be used by your elevated metabolism. Plus, you are more likely to burn off some excess body fat.
Below is a sample interval workout that can be done with just about any activity (walking, bicycling, swimming, stair climbing, etc.).
Warm up at easy pace 2-5 minutes à Perform 30 seconds of hard work (almost as hard as possible) à perform 1 minute of moderate work (recovery time-catch breath)à Repeat this process 6-10 times à Cool down at an easy pace for 2-5 minutes
3. Stable blood sugar is the key
And most importantly, you must stabilize your blood sugar! This is by far the most important factor when it comes to burning away that excess body fat and keeping it off! To effectively stabilize your blood sugar you must feed your body frequently; like every 2-3 hours. The key is to give your body only what it needs at that time. Your body burns calories 24 hours a day, so, why would you only feed it once or twice a day? Give your body the fuel it needs: vegetables, fruits, nuts, berries, whole grains, and lean proteins (chicken, fish, lean beef, eggs, etc.).
Many people are too hung up on how much fat is in food, or how healthy of a choice it is. Calories are calories and it doesn’t matter where they come from. If there’s extra… where’s it going? Yup, you guessed it… body fat!
This is not to say that what you eat is not important because it is, it just doesn’t have that much of an affect when it comes to fat loss. Try to make healthy choices whenever possible, but don’t feel like if you eat a cheeseburger it is guaranteed to be stored as fat.
4. Get the help of a professional
Unfortunately, most people don’t know enough about the human body, nutrition, or effective exercise to meet their health and fitness goals. Ask yourself this one question, “Am I happy with my current progress or condition?” If you’re not, you should consider getting the help of a qualified personal fitness professional. Don’t depend on the information you get from magazines or from your local gym/ health club. A qualified fitness professional can help you achieve your health and fitness goals, and in less time than you would imagine.
Adding muscle seems to be a mystery to most, yet if you pick up a copy of any fitness or bodybuilding magazine and you’ll almost always see a headline like this: “Gain 15 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Weeks.”
If it were so easy you’d have millions of muscle-heads running around. Even though building muscle tissue can be a challenge, I’m going to outline some very specific principles that can pack on the muscle faster than you can throw away that copy of “Muscle and Fiction”!
Before we get started though I want to clarify a few points.
Ok… here we go.
In order to add muscle tissue you must force the body to add it. Your body won’t just add a pound of muscle just because you followed a 3-set workout that you read about in Muscle + Fitness. You need to give the body a reason to make improvements – in this case add muscle tissue.
You have to provide what I call a “stimulus”. This can be done in many ways and I’ll address a few in just a moment. Basically, you need to force the body to add muscle by subjecting it to levels of stress it is not used to. Some methods are more obvious than others but all can work. Here are a few examples of how this can be done effectively.
First, the basic and common methods:
Now for the more advanced methods:
These are just a few examples of methods of increasing intensity to ensure progress. The key point to remember is that whatever you do it must be progressive in order for it to elicit a physical change. This is even more critical for those looking to add muscle size.
Although this article is geared towards individuals who are interested in gaining muscle size, the principles can also be used for individuals who want to build strength, increase metabolism, or tighten and tone muscles.
Here are some general recommendations for different goals…
If your goal is to tighten and tone muscles:
If your goal is to increase strength and power:
If your goal is to increase muscle size:
Some final reminders:
The recommendations above are general and of course would need to be adapted and adjusted for your personal goals and experience. For those of you who are advanced and may be thinking there’s no way you can build strength by training once every 10 days I challenge you to try it for at least 4 weeks, or those of you who think that you need to stick to the same basic movements like bench to build size I challenge you to try shocking the muscles by changing the exercises you perform each week for 4 weeks, and those of you with little experience I hope that you’ll throw away the fitness magazines and learn what really works.
There are some great books on these subjects and for those of you who are serious about strength training I personally recommend you check out the books “APEX” and “No Turning Back” by Brian Johnston. You can find them online at www.iart.com
If you have any questions about the techniques described in this article please feel free to contact me. You can email me at jesse@achieve-fitness.com
I wish you the best!
