Another question posed on the questions board at one of our RISE s recently was “”Why don’t we do more stomach exercises?”
I later spoke to the person who asked this question and she said that she would like to have more stomach exercises added to the group personal sessions that we do in order to help reduce the body fat around her stomach.
I explained to her then, as I’ve explained to numerous people over the years that you cannot spot-burn body fat.
Ignore what they say in all the infomercials where they show you various exercises or, more importantly, expensive machines that enable you to do some exercises that’ll apparently burn body-fat from around your stomach.
This won’t happen!
All that most of the exercises will do will be help to contribute towards an overall body-fat burn, and may, if done correctly, help tone the muscles in the stomach.
You CAN NOT spot-BURN body-fat.
All the crunches and sit-ups in the world will not remove the body-fat from around your stomach.
However, you CAN spot-REDUCE body-fat.
You can remove body-fat from particular areas in the body by addressing the reason that it was there in the first place.
If you have excess fat around your stomach, chances are it’s related to cortisol and insulin production.
For cortisol check your quality of sleep – if you’re not getting 6 to 8 hours of good quality sleep per night there are things you can do to address that I’ve covered elsewhere on this blog.
Take your stress levels. The lower your stress the lesser cortisol you produce and the more you’ll be able to remove body-fat from your stomach, and again there are articles elsewhere in this blog that deal with this.
And take your hydration – make sure you’re drinking at least 2 liters of water every day.
To address insulin issues make sure you’re having a balanced diet – approximately a third of your energy coming from proteins, fats, and carbs.
The majority of people have mega-high processed carb diets: porridge, or cereals, or toast for breakfast with an orange juice is nearly all carbs and is like taking a fat pill first thing in the morning.
Have a balance of proteins, fats, and carbs and you’ll help lower your insulin levels and remove body-fat from around your stomach.
The best exercises to do to help tone and develop the muscles in the stomach are generally a more compound full-body movements such as squats and dead-lifts which we incorporate into our sessions.
So in summary, the answer to “why we don’t do more stomach exercises?” is we feel we give you the correct amount of volume and intensity of stomach exercises to maximize development in that area and to help contribute towards an overall fat-burn.
But always remember – removal of fat has more to do with addressing the facts that I mentioned earlier: your diet, sleep, stress, and hydration.
Deal with them and the stomach exercises we do in the sessions will be more than enough to get you where you want to get.
