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Get Great Abs
By admin | May 3, 2008
Want to know how to get cut abs?
Getting great abs can be difficult for many people. Of course, there are the lucky few who are born with a genetic predisposition for a tight, lean stomach.
For the rest of us, getting that lean, cut midsection can be quite a challenge.
It doesn’t help that there is a good deal of misinformation out there, spread both by people trying to sell various contraptions and by well-meaning personal trainers who simply are ill-informed or who have simply been taught any of a number of age-old myths that were never backed up by scientific research.
Fortunately, much research has been done lately into both the causes of weight gain and the methods of shedding abdominal fat.
Dispensing with the myths about abs
Remember that as recently as 10 years ago, most trainers were still advising their clients to do sit ups in order to tone their abs.
Now, almost everyone knows that sit ups are hard on the lower back and crunches are far more effective at targeting the abs.
So what are the widely held and disseminated beliefs about abs today that are just as untrue as this old advice about doing sit ups? What “facts” about abs are actually myths?
Myth #1 - You need to target lower and upper abs separately. Recent research has shown this to be false. The abs are in reality a continuous sheath, and any exercise that works the upper abs also works the lower abs (despite the fact that some exercises may FEEL like they work one area more).
So concentrate on doing your ab exercises slowly and with proper form, always breathing in and out as you do them. This is the best way to work your upper and lower abs, giving you that sexy “eight pack” look.
Myth #2 - If you eat before bedtime, it goes straight to fat (and to your spare tire!). More recent research has shown that it doesn’t matter WHEN you eat but what you eat and how many calories you consume.
Dr. Barry Sears of the Zone Diet has long recommended a small snack (including carbs, fat, and protein) before bed to rev up the metabolism and burn fat while you sleep.
Looks like Dr. Sears was ahead of the curve on this one. So don’t worry too much about eating a late dinner or snack (though this CAN make acid reflux worse).
Concentrate more on following a sensible, ab-friendly eating plan. And ALWAYS eat breakfast. It definitely IS true that missing breakfast slows your metabolism, while eating breakfast jump-starts your metabolism.
An abs exercise routine
Any routine to tone the stomach and give you ripped abs must include the following three things:
- Ab exercises
- Daily aerobic exercise
-
A sound eating plan
If you just do the ab exercises and skip the last two parts, you might have the best abs in the world, and nobody will ever see them.
You have to burn off the fat covering them by doing aerobic exercise (start by just walking 30 minutes a day!) and by eating a good, ad-sensible diet.
Start with the very best ab exercises. Then eat right and walk regularly, and soon you will start to see progress.
If you want to speed things up, consider weight lifting, fish oil, and green tea extract. But stick to your routine, and in not too long, you’ll have great abs.
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