Stomach Exercise Will Not Help You Lose Belly Fat
Article by Brett MacPherson
I am always being asked what the best stomach exercise is to get flat abs. One of the largest myths that I have to deal with on a daily basis is the myth that abdominal training burns stomach fat. Everybody has different amounts of fat on their stomach, and for most of those people a way to successfully get rid of that stomach fat is yet to be found.
Their mistake is often in looking for the wrong training methods and exercises in order to lose their hard to move stomach fat. For most they continue to search for the mythical holy grail of abs training, the right combination of exercises using the right equipment to finally move that stubborn stomach fat almost instantly.
I wish they did but stomach specific training will not burn fat from your stomach. All they do is strengthen and develop the ab muscles underneath the stomach fat. The only real way to burn fat is to create a higher metabolic rate and to increase the fat burning hormone response, this can be done with a strategic total body training program not by training relatively small muscles with small movements.
The traditional long slow cardio workouts don’t really create the effect you need from your hormones and metabolism either. Creating a complete program focusing on using multi joint and total body weight training movements and using a high intensity in your workouts is key to getting more fat loss from your program.
This method of training using high intensity total body movements and making sure to eat a healthy diet, is a fool proof way to getting rid of the fat covering up your abs. This is far more effective than hoping that doing heaps of abdominal crunches will burn up the fat on your stomach, research and experience proves this simply will never work.
It still amazes me how most people still believe that you have to do these useless stomach exercises to lose fat from your stomach, and do hundreds of repetitions every day of the week. It is crazy how many people still advance this myth on the fitness forums every hour of the day. Please please please don’t waste your time and effort following advice like this.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate stomach exercises. The right exercises done usefully in your program can be great for toning and strengthening your stomach. Doing these stomach exercises to help strengthen and tone your muscles is a good strategy and they provide additional benefits like helping your back and posture when they are done correctly (although they can also make your back hurt if done incorrectly), but if you are looking to burn fat from your abs the fact is doing these exercises as your strategy to lose fat is not the right idea and will leave you disappointed.
Using the right combination of total body weight training and making sure your diet is healthy are the best things you can do to see your six pack abs. You will also find that doing full body exercises really do work the abs, as they are very important in their role as stabilisers of your body, some would say even more important than their ability to crunch.
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