You can get the sexy stomach you have been dreaming about without even a crunch. Probably you are asking yourself “how could this possibly happen? I must do crunches in order to get a flat stomach.” Wrong! There are 5 central strategies that will make your stomach lean and flat.
STOP being obsessed with crunches.
Your abs are not made to
flex which is what they do during crunches, so basically they are useless. Your abs are made to stabilize your entire body while
walking, running, and sitting down, and therefore they should be trained as such. Even during doing lunges (which are great lower body exercises) your abs are working to stabilize you. For example if you put your hands over your head while doing lunges you would realize that you could lunge even better. What does this tell you? It tells you that during all these standing types of movements, pushup positions or similar movements, your abs are definitely working the entire time to make sure that your body is stabilized in the specific position. Therefore these are the main exercisesyou should be doing but not to the basic crunch.
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| Image Credit : livestrongcdn.com |
Work on the principle of muscle overload.
What do I mean by that? I mean that if you are lifting weightsor doing body weight exercises and you feel like you can do 25-35 raps at once with the same weight then your muscles are not working hard enough. You should be definitely struggling a little bit with your weight training at the end of each set. With another words, add some more weight. If you are used to hold 5 pound (2.2 kg) dumbbells every time you are doing presses and you can do 20 or 30 raps without breaking a sweat, then you would never be able to
build lean muscles.
What you need to do is consistently and constantly adding weight to your routine. If you are doing pushups for example and pushups get to easy, then you have to make sure that you make it harder on yourself. One method of making it harder while doing pushups is to put your feet on a bench; this would make the pushups definitely more challenging. You should never let your routine get too easy, but if it does, then you have to make it more difficult right away.
Cardio training needs to be challenging as well.
Interval training is a one way to do your cardio more challenging. I am sure anyone has seen people in the gym
walking on the treadmill with 3 miles per hour or so and at the same time watching a show on the TV. This is a perfect example of what you should not be doing if you want to experience any positive changes. You need to do interval training where you vary the challenge of your cardiovascular routine. Running intense for 2 minutes, walking for 1 minute and going back and forth is a great way to increase your heart pulse and make you sweat.
Your Diet.
That is really where the abs are made. You MUST watch your diet; you MUST
watch what you eat. I am not a big fan of counting calories although I tried a few times in the past and trust me; it did not work out very well. My tip to you is to count ingredients. Look at the ingredients on the food label, it can be even better if the food does not have any label (like fresh fruits and vegetables), then you know for sure that what you eat is healthy and you should not worry about any calories or fats. If it is a boxed food maybe you are in a bit of trouble because the food is usually processed with a lot of junk in there. Try to eat food with as fewer ingredients as possible.
Get a support community.
My fifth tip to you is to get a support community. If you feel like it is very hard to do all this by yourself, you should consider joining a team, a class, a blog, a forum online, or simply find a workout partner. The most important is that you find a positive person with the same or similar interest. Trust me, you can go far if you have somebody next to you who would encourage you and cheer you every time you try to give up.
