admin | 
09 7th, 2008| 
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.
