Hey guys, for this post I will talk a little bit about training our abs and how we should do this. It is something quite interesting that a lot of people tend to be misinformed about.
When we look to tone our abs and get that 'summer body' that we all want we tend to go straight into working the ab muscles only by doing sit ups and crunches. However, research has found that directly training our abs like this is not what makes our abs more defined. Unless you are very lean and your ab muscles are under-developed. Working the abs only does not make them show better! This is a huge myth because we cannot just work the muscle and expect the fat to be spot-reduced. That's not how the body works unfortunately.
If toned abs is what you are looking for then you should try focus on a diet specifically for fat loss around your waist. Your abs are there, they just happen to be covered by a layer of fat so a fat loss diet around the waist may be something that could work for you!Your abs grow like all other muscles of the body and by training our abs we are helping them grow. A general rule for weight loss is that you are in a calorie deficit, so you are taking in less calories than you are burning.
Squats and deadlifts have been recommended in recent years for ab activation but new research has shown that this is not the case and that there is very little ab activation in these exercises and so you should aim to do specific ab isolation exercises in order to fully develop your abs. A crunch has been shown to have 2 times the activation of a squat or deadlift. While I would recommend you continue with your squats and deadlifts you should also try and isolate your abs by doing crunches. If a toned abdomen is what you want.
Hope this post was interesting for you guys. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment. As always, feel free to share!
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