This is a question I hear often during my fitness consultations, from acquaintances and even strangers who learn I’m a personal trainer. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if you want to lose body fat, especially that which encircles your midsection, you need to do full-body work outs.
Doing hundreds of sit ups, crunches, working on the ab machines or using the gadgets purchased on late night TV may help to strengthen the underlying musculature, but the only way to lose the love handles and excess belly fat is to work your whole body at an intensity which will elevate your heart rate. In my opinion, resistance (or strength) training is the best way of accomplishing this.
Some may ask, “Well, what about cardio? I thought doing cardio was supposed to burn fat?” It may help, if you are doing it correctly. It’s important to incorporate “intervals” into those cardio workouts, whether they are on the treadmill, walking out doors, riding a stationary bike, riding a bike outside, doing the elliptical or stair stepper.
Incorporating intervals into your cardio workout sort of “shocks” your cardiovascular system and shakes off that comfortable adaptation response we’re so good at. Intervals can be done in any combination — depending on your level of fitness. If you are a beginner, you can use shorter intervals and gradually increase your interval times.
My favorite interval pace is 30 seconds high intensity followed by 60 seconds of active recovery. What this means is that if I’m working on the elliptical, I have my cross ramp and resistance set where I want it and I don’t change it. After a 3-5 minute warm up, I pick up the pace to an intensity that increases my heart rate to my target heart range. I’m working up a sweat and breathing hard, and find it difficult to talk. I hold that intensity for 30 seconds, then back the intensity down for 60 seconds to catch my breath, then repeat. The goal for this type of work out is to shoot for 30 minutes of 30/60 second intervals. You can do this daily if you’d like, but if you incorporate at least 2 days a week of strength training, you could do the cardio on the non-resistance training days.
When talking about resistance training, I really recommend using free weights instead of the “machines” if you are in a gym. The reason for this is that when using the machines, you are only working at about 20% of your body’s strength capability. When using free weights, you are working at about 90% — more calories and more fat being burned! If you think about it, when you are sitting on a leg extension machine, you are isolating your quadriceps and working them — but really, what else is working? Not much. Your core (abs, back, etc) is just sitting there. When you incorporate squats into your workout, you are using quads, hamstrings, glutes and core musculature. By being upright for your workout moves, you are forcing your core to do more work.
To work the abs and obliques during your resistance workouts, try to leave that portion of the workout until last. Your abs are so involved in all the rest of your workout, if you work them first, you may “use up” much of the strength you need for the other larger muscle groups.
Some effective abdominal exercises are bird dogs, front planks, oblique crunches, and Swiss ball knee roll ups. However, since having my abdominal surgery — I can tell you first hand — practically ALL of the full body workout moves I’ve done definitely have an affect on my abdominal muscles! Push ups, braced dumbbell rows, cable machine work all impact the abs. So don’t be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone and try some full body work outs to start hitting that stubborn belly fat!
Not to be a Negative Nellie, but I also have to add that if you have lost a LOT of weight, it’s most likely that you will have excess skin in the triceps, abs, hips, butt, legs. From personal experience I learned exercise will not get rid of this. After months of working out I still had the “muffin top”, yet my abs were strong. I opted to have abdominal skin removal surgery done and I’m not sorry I did it. But that can be another story some other time.
As a side note you may find this bit of information a motivating factor toward resistance training: for every pound of muscle a body has, studies have shown it burns approximately 50 calories per day — at rest! With some hard work and nutritional discipline, let’s say you burn off 10 pounds of body fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle. Now, the scale isn’t going to show much change at all, but you will FEEL different. Tighter, more toned and your clothes are going to start fitting better. The best part of this is that for that 10 pounds of muscle, you are now burning about 500 calories per day — doing what? Nothing! Multiply that by seven days in a week, you have just burned an additional 3,500 calories (this is equal to one pound of body fat loss) — again, doing nothing! So when you add that fat loss to the fat you are burning in your exercise, add in your nutritional discipline, it’s a win/win situation!
Here are some YouTube video links for various abdominal exercises I found. Sometimes seeing the moves is easier than trying to read instructions on how to perform them.
Sit ups from Fit4Beginners
How To Do Crunches Correctly from JoshRubin
Oblique Crunches from Trainer Momma
Three Minute Abs with Clifta
Please feel free to email me with questions at debcrn_96@yahoo.com and I’ll do my best to get you answers.
