Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Myth #1: Crunches and other abdominal muscles workouts will get you a flat stomach

Let's see what fitness myths can be debunked and how they related to your personal experiences and thoughts. 

Crunches, sit-ups, abdominal rollers and the like are great for toning your stomach, right? Yes and no. Your abdominal muscles are covered with body fat, and the only way to get the six pack you want is to get rid of the fat first. Since you can't target areas on your body for fat removal, replacing abdominal workouts with cardio exercises and weight lifting training will help you burn fat, not only in your stomach, but other areas of the body as well. Cardio by itself will burn belly fat, but at a much slower rate than combining it with weight training.

--As stated on Yahoo! Health--


Hmm....I can agree with this. I've just started adding lots more cardio to my training regimen. At first, I wasn't doing enough, by comparison to other ways I trained, and having a round belly, with all the crunches and ab wheel reps I was doing, it turned into a rock. Now, with the more cardio I log, the more I'm beginning to cut into this stone to chisel out those abs......yeah buddy. And I've added calisthenics to the mix.....I like to keep it as a constant, since I don't get to the gym as much; in school and gotsta keep a focus on that. I like to alternate the sequence and it seems to help me get better with cardio. I do long distance one day...as a matter of fact, going in a few to get in about 2hours, and then tomorrow will be short, about 30 to 40 minutes. This is working for me right now. Plus, I had to start eating better, thus, the Dolce Diet experiment.

What do you think, or what has your experience been?

Myth #2 coming tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. Hmmmm...I have some problems with this thought! The bottom line is you need to burn more calories than you eat. This can happen with ANY type of exercise. It is all about net energy balance not what type of exercise you do. "Cardio itself will burn belly fat" is flat wrong! So, if you need to cut fat to see your abs then you need to calculate how many calories you are burning through exercise and how many calories you are eating. There should be NO reason for you to do two hours of cardio unless you are training for a marathon!

    ReplyDelete