People concentrate their ab workout exercises by anatomy. Exercises are differentiated by the area that needs the most work and in most cases, it’s our stomach. Instead of being so specific and focusing just on the stomach, we should focus on our overall metabolism and do activities like multi-joint activities and interval training. In doing so, our body will streamline itself to get fit and show those rock hard abs.
Ab machines and ab exercises promise you rock hard abs in 8-12 repetitions. Other variations of the same products claim to help you flatten your tummy in no time at all. But the fact is, they’re all empty promises because spot reduction doesn’t work.
Training just the abs, will not give you rock hard abs. Isolation exercises like ab crunches or lower abdominal strengthening will strengthen your abs, but it will not give you the definition that you want. In fact, you may not notice a physical difference from training the abs only.
If you really want to train your abs, work on your whole body. This can be done by doing multi joint exercise that help kick start your metabolism. By increasing your metabolism, you help your body use more calories and burn more fat.
Some exercises you can do include jogging, squats, lunges, brisk walking, push-ups and even dancing. Doing these specifically trains the large muscles, which uses up more energy. The more trained these large muscles become, the more efficient they are at burning fat.
Interval and circuit program training also raises your metabolism by challenging and keeping your muscles in a constant state of readiness to perform at any time. These quick, intense bursts of exercises (for example, jumping jacks-brisk walking-sprinting-jogging) work muscles hard causing lactic acid and carbon dioxide buildup, which needs to be cleared. More oxygen needs to be supplied to the muscles to keep them going. This ongoing cycle enlarges the muscles causing them to use up more fat as fuel.
The overall result is that the muscles work so hard during the exercise activity that the muscle must then be repaired and replenished when muscles are recovering. This replenishment of the muscles increases the body’s metabolism by forcing the body to burn fat to help the muscles repair and replenish.
When all is said and done, do we keep doing lower ab workouts and should we really be targeting something so specific? Current research says “no” and as far as sculpting six pack abs go, it definitely makes sense to lose the fat and the flab in order to allow the six packs to show through!
