The hot question these days is “how can I have tighter abs?” .Well, I am going to dispel some myths that have somehow gained popularity in the fitness industry as well as point you in the right direction towards a rock hard mid-section.
One of the things that drives me crazy that I see on infomercials is the claim that the device, drug, routine, etc. will burn belly fat. There is not a single shred of evidence that abdominal fat or any other fat can be targeted for reduction, believe me I have looked. Now that I have broken every one's heart let’s get to what you can do.
The abdomen is made up of several different muscles with a few distinct purposes namely rotation, holding the spine in place, forced expiration (breathing out) and pulling the upper body towards the hips. So why is this information important in developing flatter abs? Well, I want to encourage you to think about which of these actions will give the appearance of the smallest waist line. If the answer to this question hasn't popped in to your head I want you to hunch forward right now and take a look at your stomach, now sit back up and blow out the air out of your lungs as hard as possible. I think the answer will be quite clear to you at this point. If not, the muscle used to push the air out of your lungs is what you are looking to tighten up.
There is only one muscle responsible for this action. In order to tighten this muscle you will need to put stress on it. The way this is done is by a maneuver called "drawing in" all this means is that you pull your belly button towards your spine. This is similar to sucking in except you do not need to hold your breath to do this. This can be done anywhere, anytime, and needs no equipment to do. There are two different positions this works from; an upright position or from the plank position (seen below) if you are laying down on your back gravity is doing the work for you. Since you cannot do it lying on your back because gravity is doing the work for you the opposite is true in that if you do it from a plank it will be more difficult (which means more effective in most cases). Aim for 30 seconds at a time to start with, if this is too easy increase the time 15 seconds per workout. Once you get to 1:30 add a little weight on your butt. Start light this will make it worlds harder to complete. You can do these 2-4 times at the end of your workout. If these are too difficult try doing them from your knees instead of your toes initially and follow the same sort of progression.
(note: you can have both arms down)
So we have talked about slimming the waist line through exercise, but it
does not address actually improving muscle tone as the muscle used for drawing
in is a deep muscle and is not visible. The muscle that is responsible for the
elusive six pack pulls your torso towards your hips. This can be done one of
two ways for maximum effect. You can either do the planks as discussed above
which will be killing two birds with one stone or do crunches in addition to
these. There is no reason to do full sit-ups because the abdominal muscles are
only working until the point when your lower back starts to lift off the floor,
a different muscle is responsible for this and for most people does not need
the extra stimulation. The last portion of the mid-section that I will address is the obliques. Not sure why they are called love handles since everyone seems to get rid of them. There are two very effective ways to work your obliques. You can either do Russian twists which is a variation of the sit up (shown below) where you go to about a ninety degree angle and then twist your torso back and forth or what are known as one-handed farmers walks. If the Russian twist is a little too difficult the farmers walks are the best place to start and will actually help with you posture as well. The farmer walk is performed by grabbing a dumbbell in one hand and walking a set distance with it. Pretty simple right? All that needs to be done to vary the intensity is to either grab a larger dumbbell or make the distance further.
One last thing I want to leave you with is that you won't want to do all of these on every workout. This will take away from the other work you can do. No matter how much you strengthen those muscles it will not be a replacement for dropping excess body fat which is best done through compound exercises using the larger muscle groups of the body. To avoid making this too long winded I will not go in to depth on proper progression for these exercises and I will write a future article on progression specifically which should be a quick read which should take your exercise routine to the next level. Hope you enjoyed the article and good luck on your pursuit of a better body and better fitness.
Feel free to post your questions below!
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