Abdominal Exercises
Does the dream of the perfect "six-pack" seem unobtainable? Have you have accepted the rolls of fat that spill over your belt? Is wearing a midriff never an option?
If you answered yes then you are not alone. The desire for a trimmer waist and a leaner profile, is common to many but a goal that many seem unable to achieve. Don't give up! Your goal is neither insurmountable nor vain. Good core-muscle strength stabilizes the body, making it easier for a person to move, significantly improving the value of a person's life.
Belly fat is such a everyday matter these days that experts represent it as "central obesity." Men are more likely to carry surplus weight in their gut area, whereas women carry their excess pounds on the hips and thighs.
Reducing abdominal fat reduces the risk of many preventable diseases. Doctors advise us that belly fat is a source of toxins as well as being unhealthy. It greatly elevates the danger of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, breast and colon cancer, high blood pressure and back pain.
Fitness professionals and physicians advise people to get a basic cognizance of the abdominal muscles that make up the core of the body. The "six-pack" extends from the sternum to the pelvis, and it is the top layer of muscle under the skin.
"Love handles" run diagonally from the lower ribs to the upper pelvic bone and work together with a deeper muscle that stems from the pelvis to the lower ribs to rotate the torso. The "girdle," often called the postpartum pouch and is considered the most troublesome abdominal area to tone, stretches horizontally across the lower part of the stomach.
Have you done all of these abdominal exercises before and never gotten the results you wanted? If so, your abs are firm, but ill-defined due to your excess weight. Aerobic exercise and a intelligent diet is the only way to reduce weight.
Personal trainers concur that to realize the dream of a slim waist, a person should exercise regularly to sustain weight loss. Cardiovascular exercises, an essential part of any exercise routine, do not have to be dull. For example, some entertaining aerobic exercises are dancing, swimming and biking.
New research has shown that abdominal muscular activation in training exercises is quite variable, but has some general trends that can be used to build exercises. Some sit-up and curl-up research connected to injury risk is well known.
Abdominal exercises that have strong hip involvement have been shown to create large compressive and shear loads on the lumbar spine that could be dangerous for weak or injured individuals. If the hands are clasped behind the neck, they should be relaxed and not pull the neck into hyper flexion.
It is less well known that positioning a person in greater hip flexion without foot stabilization will not insure the absence of hip flexing activity . Remember that good curl-up technique, strong abdominal activation, with minimal hip flexing activity is a motor skill that requires practice to develop, and that good abdominal muscle recruitment patterns can only be developed by considerable, focused practice.
No one exercise is clearly best for training the abdominal wall so physical educators need to teach and use a variety of abdominal exercises to develop abdominal fitness. The exercises that most strongly activate the abdominals and minimize hip flexing activity appear to be curl-ups, curl-ups with a twist, and both isometric and dynamic sideward abdominal support.
For fit individuals, it may be appropriate to do hip flexing exercises since they have been shown to have some of the highest activation of the abdominal muscles. It should be noted that these exercises are hard on the lower back and may be suitable only for fit individuals.
Traditional curl-ups performed with additional resistance or at high speed tend to have larger increases in the strongest trunk muscles compared to deeper abdominal muscles. The twisting curl-up and the side-lying curl-up are good exercises that tend to emphasize abdominal oblique activity.
Some experts advocate isometric abdominal training, since this is the muscle action that is most likely to be used in many movements or back-stabilizing conditions. Studies have shown that maximum abdominal activation in trunk stabilization can be created by pelvic stabilization combined with isometric neck and trunk movement.
Recently, abdominal curl up or crunch exercise devices have become popular. Apparently the best way to increase resistance for abdominal exercise is to use additional weight or an incline board. The use of abdominal fitness stations with good adjustability of body position and resistance are also likely to be effective training methods.
Desirable abdominal muscle function is a learned skill that requires careful abdominal exercise techniques. It has been shown that no one abdominal exercise is best, but exercises that provide the greatest abdominal activation with minimal lumbar spine loading are curl-ups, curl-ups with a twist, reverse and sideward curl exercises. Effective training of the abdominal muscles requires a variety of abdominal exercises in order to extend the resistance to the abdominal muscles for fit individuals.
A recent program that has been developed for either fat loss or muscle building and has been developed into an ebook called the "Truth about Abs"claims to address the biggest problem that most people are facing as to why they cannot see their abdominals. The reason of course is that the problem of losing the stubborn stomach fat that is covering up the abs.
The "Truth about Abs" contains full descriptions and photos of all of the most effective abdominal exercises as well as the central axiom which is that the abs-specific exercises are actually of minor importance compared to actually getting rid of the belly fat that is covering up your abs. This is one of the most successful abdominal fat loss programs available today. You can read more about it here.