Lower Ab Workouts – Should We Really Be Targeting Something So Specific?
April 1, 2009 by Jose Loni
Filed under Weight Loss
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.
A lot of ab machines and exercises are out there claiming they can solve your flab problem. However, because they work solely the ab area, you don’t see any visible difference after using their machines and workouts. In fact, they just don’t work because spot reduction really 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.
The more large muscles you work out, the more energy is used up to fuel muscle activity. Activities like brisk walking (especially on an incline), cycling, running, lunges and squats work the large muscles so they will help you burn fat.
Doing short, quick bursts of intense training like a circuit program of jumping jacks-brisk walking-sprinting-walking makes our muscles work extremely hard. They start building up waste carbon dioxide and lactic acid, which the body must now get rid of.
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!
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