Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Ab Exercises - The Long Road

By Jose Loni

Ab exercises are the enemy when it comes to getting ripped abs. Ab exercises cause more muscle imbalances and potential injury. We need to focus on increasing our metabolism and watching what we eat to achieve ripped abs.

When we want six pack abs, we automatically think of doing ab exercises like sit-ups and crunches. Unfortunately, done improperly, these exercises train the hip flexors instead of the abdominal muscles resulting in muscle imbalances. Ab exercises also tend to put our backs in an awkward position causing potential injury.

Ab exercises don't have any effect on having ripped abs. To have ripped abs, we need to increase our metabolism. Resistance training as well as interval training have produced very quick results when it comes to burning fat.

When we train with resistance or intervals, we place demands on our body, which causes our muscles to react by increasing its metabolic activity. When our muscles require energy, our body will seek any excess fat and utilize it as fuel resulting in fat burning and utilizing the excess fat in our belly.

A beneficial side effect of interval and resistance training is an increase in metabolism, which allows for extended fat burning even several hours after the training session.

Healthy eating means our body is being fuelled by good quality foods like lean proteins and complex carbohydrates (not sweets, sodas, fatty and fast foods), that allow for efficient burning of calories, therefore little or no excess calories are stored as fat in our stomach areas.

To have enough energy to burn throughout the day and to stabilize blood sugar levels, it is also good to eat small, frequent (5-6 times) meals throughout the day.

Ab exercises are, indeed, the longer, possibly more harmful, road to six-pack abs. Care must be taken to avoid injuries and muscle imbalances. Get six pack abs by increasing metabolism and having diet discipline.

About the Author:

No comments:

Post a Comment