The best exercises to burn FAT from your tummy!
Bent knee sit ups, straight leg raises, crunches, and straight leg sit ups, medicine ball twists, abdominal bracing and now doing all those abdominal exercises on fit balls?
Will the exercise that is the most effective please stand up?
Ask yourself a few questions...
- When doing all these exercises, what are the reasons you are doing them in the first place?
- Is it to burn fat from our tummy, strengthen the core, thin the waist, or get a ‘six pack’?
- Have you ever been guilty of crunches at the end of your workout, just so you can get that burning sensation in the abdominal area, because you know that it is your fat cells exploding and the ripple of your six-pack forming?
- Are you emotionally attached to an exercise that gives you that burning sensation in an area that you want tighter muscles and less fat (squish the fat, squish the fat, squish the fat)?
Building that six-pack requires you to build more muscle and trim fat, and it has been suggested that crunches are an effective means in which to do that. But as you are not lifting a significant load, eg, body weight (which we need to build muscle), the changes to the tummy are zero or close to it. The overload is too low and the number of repetitions performed are far too high to stimulate the physiological adaptations to gain an increase in muscle strength.
So what do the abs do?
The function of the abdominal muscles is to stabilize the pelvis and lower back area to protect it from injury whilst doing physical and everyday activities. The abdominal muscle group are made up of the rectus abdominus (six-pack, used for flexion and extention of the trunk), internal and external obliques and the transverse abdominus (the core muscles it’s role is to stabilize the pelvis).
When performing crunches you will find that you will get very good at them in no time. There is no question that if you have never done any crunches before and you are to perform fifty right now that you will have sore tummy muscles tomorrow. But, if you continue doing fifty everyday, they will become too easy as you have built up a tolerance to them. Next thing you will have to do one hundred, then two hundred, then three hundred, where does it stop. Now, if you had time to do three hundred crunches you may as well do an exercise that will burn the fat from your body rather than hoping the burning sensation is fat cells exploding.
If you are looking to burn fat from your tummy…move more! Walk, bike ride, strength train, run, anything that gets you a bit huffy and puffy.
Your body burns fat from all over your body, regardless of which exercise you perform.
And the winner is...
A large majority of strength training exercises will help strengthen your core but if you are looking to target your abdominal muscles then the best exercises are:
- Squats
- Deadlifts
- Lunges
- Push ups
- Chin ups
- Dips
- Lat pull downs
Crunches and sit ups do not burn fat or flatten your tummy. The above exercises overload the abdominals while the body is doing full body functional movements. It is these positions that there is a need for the pelvis and lower back to be stabilized by the abdominals. The overload is high, effective and functional. Any overload on the floor cannot compare. There is no requirement for the pelvis and lower back to be stabilized as they are being externally supported by the floor.