Learn the Truth About Weight Loss and Getting Great Abs

Debunking The Ab Myth

Ab training has been done to death but it’s time
to take another look. Why? Because people are still
training their abs wrong so all that ab training
information must not be doing the job.

1 – No Spot Reducing – 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 ab exercises, you barely burn any calories
while doing those endless crunches.

Your fat burning time is best spent elsewhere on
more effective training. You also don’t work the
ab muscle intensely enough to develop it.

So endless high rep crunches fail on both counts –
poor muscle building and poor fat burning. Two
thumbs down as the cliche goes.

2 – The Abs are a Muscle and should be trained as such.
You don’t need high reps and lots of sets to work
your abs. This just leads to overtraining.

Now, abs are a more endurance oriented muscle so
slightly higher reps may be more effective. However,
you should keep the reps at 20 or lower and work on
increasing the resistance.

Yes, you should be increasing the weights on ab
exercises, just like your other exercises. The stronger
your abs, the better they will look when the fat
is stripped away.

Ever see a really thin guy with a flat stomach but
no abs? The abs haven’t been trained and aren’t
developed enough to stand out even when the fat is
stripped away.

3 – Don’t train the abs – What the heck do I mean
by this? Well, your abs get a lot of indirect work
from other exercises so you really won’t need more
than a couple of hard sets of weighted crunches to
work your abs.

Your abs are a factor in exercises such as squats,
deadlifts, seated or standing presses, dumbbell
pullovers, pulldowns, etc. Don’t believe me?

Next time you work out, do a few hard sets of standing
stiff armed pulldowns on the lat machine and tell
me your abs aren’t sore the next day. I did them
yesterday and my abs are more sore than my back today.

If you want to develop a flat stomach with your abs
visible, you need to treat your abs like a muscle
and train that way. And you need to strip away
the fat with a proper training and nutrition program
designed around total fat loss, not trying to spot
reduce through endless crunches.

Is there anything out there in the fitness world
suffering from more misinformation that how to get
abs?

The number of ab machines constantly coming to
market is mind boggling. Especially considering
that they aren’t needed and won’t give you the
results that you want.

Let’s set the record straight on ab training right
now and give you the real information you need so
you can say no to the next infomercial ab machine
and yes to actual abs.

1 – Training your abs consistently will eventually
give you the flat stomach or six-pack that you want.

No. It’s not gonna happen if your abs are covered
by a layer of body fat and doing endless sets of ab
exercises is not the way to rid yourself of that
excess body fat.

2 – Train your abs everyday for best results.

Again, no. Your abs are a muscle, just like your
chest, lats, arms and so on. You should train your
abs just like these other muscles, with progressive
resistance and high intensity – then allow them to
rest and recover. Never train your abs more than 3
days a week.

3 – You need to do hundreds or reps and feel the burn
to get great abs.

Yep, again the answer is no. The abs a muscle just
like I mentioned above. To get six pack abs you
need to strip off the fat, but you also need to build
the abs to get them to really pop out.

If the muscle isn’t developed, you’ll just have a
flat stomach but no abs. The name of the game is
progressive resistance for sets of 8 – 20 reps, just
like your other muscles.

4 – Train the abs with lots of sets and high reps to
burn off stomach fat.

You guessed it. This is also false. Spot reduction
just isn’t going to happen as much as we’d all like
it to. You can’t burn fat on your stomach by doing
endless crunches.

You need to put together a proper weight lifting
program, nutrition plan, and cardio in order to rid your
stomach of that stubborn layer of fat and bring yout
your abs.

Gregg Gillies

Gregg Gillies is a speaker, consultant, fat loss expert, trainer and author. He teaches fitness via his articles, books and courses at his web site http://www.buildleanmuscle.com . He is the author of two books: Complete information on his books, along with lots of free articles are available at his site. And while there, don’t forget to sign up for his free newsletter, “Fit Physique”.

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