Sunday 20 May 2012

Why doing situps doesn't give you a sixpack

When a lot of beginners start to workout, me included they often have goals, and the main one is trimming that belly fat and getting a six pack, which is a good target to go for. However, people will often workout the wrong way and don't see the results they want and then give up. One of the most common mistakes people make is concentrating too much on the abdominal muscle at the beginning. If you have a lot of belly fat, ab exercises will not get rid of that belly fat. You could do 300 situps a day and still not get a six pack. This is because some people think that they can target where the fat is burned from by doing specific exercises. This is wrong.

Fat is mostly deposited into what's known as adipose tissue, which is most concentrated mainly in the abdomen, which is why you get a fat belly rather than anywhere else. So you need to to burn that fat in order to get those abs to show.

Ab exercises are some of the worst exercises for fat burning as they don't burn many calories. The more calories you burn, the more fat you will lose. So the fastest way to get rid of fat is to do the exercises that burn the most calories.

There are two broad approaches to exercise; long slow cardio and short intense exercises. While long hours of cardio burn more calories during the workout, there is a crucial aspect that a lot of people don't take into account, recovery. When you do intense exercise, be it intense cardio or using weights or resistance machines you will take much longer to recover, whilst in this recovery satge, although you aren't doing any exercise, you still burn a lot of calories for hours after your workout. This is because you have to rebuild your energy stores and the muscle you just ripped by doing such an intense workout which requires energy. This is why so many exercise plans that have half hour workouts really work (eg P90X and Insanity), and also why some people don't always see the results they want.

When it comes to training in this way, you really have to commit. It's high intensity which means you have to give it your all or you won't get what's known as a big enough "after burn", even if you can't go at a ridiculous pace, you still need to go as hard as you can and limit your rest periods. Only then will you achieve the massive body transformations that exercise programmes say they can give. The pictures of before and after aren't fake, they're the results you can get if you really commit to the programme and give it 100%.


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