Abdominal Exercises Do Not Burn Belly Fat

It seems that people are always asking me what the best abdominal exercises are to get a flat six pack stomach. The common belief that ab exercises will help you lose belly fat is one of the biggest myths I deal with daily as a fitness trainer. Nearly everyone has some degree of excess body fat in the midsection, and the best way to get rid of it continues to elude most.

The problem is that most people are looking for the wrong types of workouts to lose that stubborn belly fat. Most people are searching for a miracle combination of abdominal exercises combined with the best ab workout ever invented to will burn off their belly fat fast.

Unfortunately, ab-targeted workouts do NOT burn off fat from your belly. They only strengthen and tone the underlying abdominal muscles. You need to focus on a full body strategic workout that will create a metabolic rate increase and fat-burning hormonal response from your training regime as a whole.

Also, simply doing cardio workouts will not necessarily produce the highest metabolic or hormonal response either. What you really need is a much more complete high intensity exercise program that focuses on training the entire body with resistance training and multi-joint workouts.

Full body high intensity training combined with a healthy balanced diet of nutrient dense, natural foods on a regular basis, is the real secret to losing that extra stomach fat that covers up the abs. This is a much better plan than just trying to do ab workouts and hoping that by just doing a lot of ab exercises like crunches and leg raises you will lose your belly fat.

The amazing thing is that most people still believe that in order to get rid of belly fat, you need to do abdominal exercises every day using hundreds of reps. I see this type of erroneous advice every day on the fitness forums. Please do not waste your time and effort with this type of advice!

Now before you say "how can an abs trainer not recommend abdominal workouts", realize that I do strongly believe that a certain amount of ab-targeted exercises added to your routines are beneficial. Ab-specific exercises will help you strengthen and tone your abdominal muscles and are useful for other reasons such as a healthy back and posture when done correctly. But the fact remains that abdominal exercises are not necessary for fat loss.

A much smarter full body resistance training program and a good healthy balanced diet are the most important factors for fat reduction. Many of the full body exercises also work the abdominals and core indirectly due to the stabilization required in some of the more difficult variations.

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Michael Geary (CPT) is a recognized International Fitness Expert, contributing writer for Muscle & Fitness Magazine, author of the internationally-popular book, The Truth about Six-Pack Abs.