It's
all about your body fat. This is why when you see a man with
ridiculously ripped abs, guess what, the rest of his body is shredded
too! This is because there is very little body fat between his skin
and muscles. When you see a woman with buff shoulders, arms and
legs, she will have wicked abs too! It's all about overall body fat.
This is why if you want great abs, you must loose overall body fat.
This
cannot be accomplished with doing a ton of sit-ups, crunches, side
bends, or swivel twists. To slash overall body fat, you must do
compound weight exercises that hit several muscle groups at the same,
while sticking to a good diet. A few of my favorite compound lifts
and a good place to start, are dead lifts, squats, bench press, lat
pull-down, push-ups, pull ups and chin ups.
Working
out with weights, body weight exercises or against resistance,
increases lean muscle tissue and gives you a great cardio workout all
at the same time. The more lean muscle tissue that you have, the
faster your resting metabolism will be. Resting Metabolic Rate is
how much energy your body requires just to function as well as how
many calories and how much stored body fat gets used for baseline
energy.
Vigorous
strength workouts increase production of two key fat burning
hormones: growth hormone and testosterone. Woman do produce
testosterone, but in very tiny amounts. In greater amounts, these
hormones will improve the body's efficiency at using stored fat for
energy.
Intense
training with weights recruits more fast twitch muscle fiber than do
lengthy, steady paced cardio sessions, which rely mostly on slow
twitch muscle fiber. Fast twitch muscle fiber requires more calories
to function.
Lifting
weights (which can include working out with resistance bands and
cable machines too) shapes and hardens the body, creating the look of
more fat lost than what actually shows up on the scale. This is
because tight, toned muscle takes up less space than does loose,
flabby muscle.
Here
is a couple of questions for you about abdominal fat. What type of
muscle burns more fat? A small, weak muscle (like in the abs) or a
big naturally strong muscle (like in the thighs)? Slam dunk answer:
the big naturally strong muscle. That which does not require much
power does not require much energy. Low energy needs = tiny amounts
of fat burned during exercise (like sit-ups). Tiny amount of fat
burned = no change in the appearance of your mid-section.
Take
away message: To shrink the stomach, focus on exercises that target
the largest muscles of the body because they burn the most fat.
