Name 10 friends real quick and think about how many times you've heard any one of them talk about wanting that bangin 6-pack or a slim sexy midsection??? Probably heard it more than once or twice? Most people these days concerned with their physique are either openly or covertly chasing this goal, and with good reason. A slim midsection is clearly one of the more popular ways for prospective mates to weed out the persona non grata among large groups of people. One great way for guys to demonstrate power and physical fitness is to have that strong, ripped core. And of course the ladies looking to stick out in a crowd will look to maintain a slender, albeit shapely, waist/hip area.
So we've established that an attractive core is something we'd like to have. So, why skip the Abs class at the local globo-gym?? Though studies can be found to support either stance, the better studies tend to show that reducing extra fat around the mid-section by performing high repetition exercise with only that group of muscles is fairly ineffective. Meaning that hundreds and hundreds of even the most perfect, TV-gadget-assisted crunches aren't going to get you to your goal. Why you ask?? Because that's just not the way the body works unfortunately. This method of burning fat from specific areas using exercise for just that area is commonly known as "Spot-Reduction", and is pretty much a myth.
The way the body burns off extra stored fat, from anywhere and everywhere, is to be in a state of caloric deficit over long periods of time. Caloric deficit means that the body is expending, or burning, more calories than it's taking in. To put it into an exciting, grade-school style word problem: If a person was completely balanced and taking in 2000 calories per day and expending exactly 2000 calories through the normal everyday activities of breathing, pumping blood, digesting food, and exercise necessary to fill in the rest, they would be at a level of Maintenance. This means they wouldn't gain or lose any weight while staying at these levels. A caloric deficit would happen if this person would eat say 100 calories less in food, and burn off an extra 100 calories in exercise per day. This would be a 200 calorie deficit per day, and result in a slow loss of extra weight. **Disclaimer** Do myself and every other fitness professional you know a favor and don't take what I just said and do something stupid with it. Achieving a 2000 calorie deficit by only eating 500 calories and spending 8 hours on a treadmill will not only lead to dangerous weight loss, but may also kill you. Don't piss off your body, it's smarter than you are. Okay done. Back to our SLOW, RESPONSIBLE caloric deficit. When your body burns off extra calories like this, it's going to take them from places all over your body, because it's more efficient to do it this way. So even though you may want it all to come from right behind your belly button, it ain't gonna happen. Sorry, that's science, and that's life.
Now will doing a few thousand crunches not accomplish anything at all?? Of course not, you're still burning expending energy and therefore burning calories. So this can lead to fat loss. However, the relative strength and range of motion of the abdominal and core muscles doesn't really allow them to perform a lot of actual Work, from a physics standpoint. You can burn some calories this way, but nowhere near as many as you can burn with a more full body approach using the right amount of intensity and resistance. Don't believe me? Quick, do 100 repetitions of a crunch, and then do 100 repetitions of a burpee. Which one feels like you might be doing more work??
Aside from the caloric expenditure, any type of core exercise that you can do for that many repetitions is only going to improve the muscle's endurance. So any type of real strength or power gains just aren't going to happen. You'd be much better off in this case choosing exercises that allow you to use much more weight and/or faster movements, that you can only do for a few repetitions. By changing your core routine to higher resistance, higher power, exercises, and pairing them with more full body exercises you'll do two things: train a much more powerful, and "toned" midsection, and burn off more calories, which will get you to that slim waistline much much sooner. Plus, you won't have to suffer through whatever poppy bubblegum crap music they tend to play in those Hawt Abzz classes these days.
Long story short: Ditch the crunches, and start working the rest of your body. Burn a little, or burn a shitload. Up to you kids!
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