ABS

I am sitting here today in the gym and was asked for probably the billionth time how do I get ABS. My next question is always what exactly do you mean? Do you want to increase the muscle tone or do you wanna lose the layer of fat that has taken over?

Usually they are looking to lose the fat. I blame television and magazines for the misconception that you can simply buy an ab machine or do crunches to rid that layer of fat. Could not be further from the truth. Crunches are not going to burn fat at least not that much fat from the mid-section without proper nutrition and exercise.

It's a pretty simple concept. You have to eat less calories than your burning. Now there is a little more to the science end of it including your resting metabolic rate and so on but we do not need to go into that here for this purpose.

So let's break this down a little bit. What burns calories? We all know that cardiovascular exercise burns calories but is it the best option? Many people forget or don't realize that working with weights burns calories. Just because there is no calorie counter does not mean that you are not burning calories. In fact weight training can burn more calories than cardio alone. When you are done with cardio your done burning fat...when you get done weight training you continue to burn fat for many hours to follow. Another point to make is the more lean muscle mass you have the more calories you burn.

So let's put to rest some common myths. Will weight training make me bulky? No..not unless that is your goal and you are eating appropriately to make this happen as well as taking supplements to speed the process. This is a big fear for many women...bottom line is women do not have the correct hormones to build muscle effectively. Will weight training make me less flexible? Again...no. As long as you are training using a full range of motion for every exercise you will not lose flexibility in fact you should gain flexibility.

So the bottom line is...get in the gym and work hard and go home and eat less. Again I am making this simple on purpose because we don't need to concentrate on fancy programs or diets especially in the beginning. This is what you need to do to find those elusive abs.

That is all for today!!!

Have a great week!!