Sunday, October 12, 2008 Abs-solutely challenging By Luis A. Quibranza III
(Disclaimer: This does not contain a sure-fire, complete guide to getting great looking abs. In fact, the author does not have a six-pack.)
You throw yourself in the comfort of your sofa, pop open a can of soda, clutch your universal remote and, voila! The home shopping channel is on featuring another new-yet-uninspiring machine promising to give you the abs you’ve always wanted.
Promises. The people behind these exercise machines wanting another windfall in sales simply hire models with abs (probably for years already) and take a shot of them while working out. Yes, the truth may hurt but it also sets you free: there is no quick and magical way to getting these rock hard cut muscles.
Face it. The abdomen is one of the hardest muscles to develop in the whole body. There are lots of thin people out there, but surprisingly with the majority of them failing to show off a six-pack. You can trim your biceps and triceps easily. But nope; not the abs. These take a little more hard work and commitment.
If you’ve been sweating day in - day out, crunching your way to achieving your desire but still not getting it, then maybe you should read this.
According to bodybuildingforyou.com: “One of the big myths of abs training is spot reducing. Many people have the mindset of wanting to lose their stomach. They aren’t worried about their arms, or back or legs so they embark on a program heavy on crunches and light on everything else.
“This type of spot reducing abs program won’t work. Endless crunches will not melt away the fat from your midsection. It just doesn’t work that way. And despite the “burn” of high rep abs exercises, you barely burn any calories while doing those endless crunches.” writes Greg Gillies who’s also with Ironman Magazine.
Did you get that? Spot-reducing is a big myth in abs training. That simply means that you can’t just do an exercise for a certain area of your body and get rid of the fat there.
So for your way to abs, you’ll have to hit your target from both sides.
One is losing body fat (regular cardio exercise, strength training for the entire body, and a healthy, low-calorie diet). And two, training the abs by rigorous specific abs exercises (which you can find all over the internet). If you’ve lost pounds, feel awesome and you still don’t have flat abs, don’t be surprised. After all the time and effort, getting rock-hard abs needs of you something else you can’t control: a cooperative gene pool.
Which leads us back to you on the sofa and the basic question to begin with:
Why do you want those abs? Yes, a high-level of fitness is readily available for those who pursue it with consistency and cost. But it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have these abs after all the exercise, that you are a failure. But if you haven’t even gotten down on the floor and tried exercising in the first place, then that’s a different story.
But granting you are the type who has forever lived a healthy lifestyle, but are deprived of having formed abs, does that mean you can be labeled as unhealthy and unfit? Absolutely not.
