I’ve been going to the gym in some form of regularity for about 6 years now. Most of what I’ve learned in techniques and form have come from trial and error and more recently great mentors. But most people at the gym don’t want to be bothered with my advice (there’s so much out there that it does become confusing and frustrating), so I usually don’t bother engaging people who are doing an exercise improperly or doing one they shouldn’t be bothering with.
One of these that drives me nuts is overweight people that spend so much time and focus on the ab machines. There is no such thing as spot training. By this I mean you can’t focus on an area of fat to reduce. Fat comes off your body in whatever order it naturally wants to, and it’s different from person to person. Unfortunately, the first place fat builds up is in the gut for men, and the hips, waist and upper shoulders for women… even more unfairly, this is the last place the fat comes off.
Understanding that you can’t focus on reducing fat in a specific area, and that you need to just have a strong cardio regiment and reasonable diet to reduce your overall body fat will save you countless unproductive hours in the gym. Focusing on ab workouts in the gym will actually make your stomach look bigger. If you have a belly, the fat that pushes that area out is both beneath and above the abdominal muscles. Because of this, if you increase the size of your ab muscles, it will just make the fat on top of the abs stick out even further. If your overall goal is to just get rid of the gut, focus on reducing calorie intake and burning calories through cardio and an overall weight lifting program.
September 20th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[...] the people at the gym have terrible form and are doing exercises improperly. As I mentioned in my abs article, I’ve learned it’s best to leave people and their workouts alone, so I do my best to [...]
October 10th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Hey,
You seem pretty knowledgeable about exercise. I just joined the gym and I’m not overweight at all, 6′1, 160-165lbs about. I started having a gut over the last few months so I completely cut out beer and started watching my diet (sticking mainly to protein and way less carbs).
What can I do to lose my gut? Right now I’m doing weight training for my upper body, mainly arms, chest and back in that order. I find my lower back hurts a lot when I do situps so I can’t do that many of them.
What should I do to get abs? I don’t know if I should just take less calories and do cardio or combine that with weight lifting while adding protein shakes.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
ive been wanting to lose the fat around my stomach as it king of sticks out, but i dont want to lose much weight as im pretty skinny.
how do you suppose i do this?