Before I continue, allow me to point out the difference between uncovering the abdominals and conditioning the abdominals. Uncovering involves fat loss in the midsection, while conditioning involves training the midsection. These are two entirely different things. If you are an experienced resistance trainee, this had better not come as a big surprise. Never train abdominals with the intention of losing fat around the waist. Approach your abdominal training as a part of your overall core conditioning.
Let's face it, what do people ask for more than anything? A flatter stomach! What do trainers and fitness enthusiasts immediately focus on when fat loss in the abdominal region is the challenge? You guessed it, abdominal exercises. Wrong! In the absence of dieting and/or improving your fitness lifestyle in other areas, if you were to do nothing but abdominal exercises you would show no results when it comes to revealing those invisible abs. This may be one of the single biggest reasons beginners lose their motivation to train. They exclusively do tons of abdominal work and never show visible signs of improvement. When a person does see fat loss progress while training abdominals, it is almost always because there are other newly added components of their fitness program that are responsible. Specific to fat loss, abdominal training by itself is nearly worthless.
Imagine, if you will, impermeable sheaths of tissue separating subcutaneous fat stores from muscles throughout the entire body. For our purposes, these sheaths separate subcutaneous fat from its underlying muscles making it impossible for localized fat to move directly across to trained muscles. Now imagine the cardiovascular system being able to transport fat to muscle. When muscle energy is expended and is being replaced in any location in the body, under the proper dietary conditions, fat-burning hormones and enzymes circulate to every fat cell the vascular system can reach (almost all fat cells in the body) simultaneously. Hence, there is a general fat release throughout the body, not localized or isolated fat release as some still believe. Frequent low- to moderate-intensity, full-body workouts with a moderate amount of aerobics thrown in, coupled with an effective diet, will go a long way to improving general fat loss to include that waistline.
Ron J. Clark is the President and founder of the National Federation of Professional Trainers (NFPT). NFPT offers an NCCA-accredited Personal Trainer Certification. For more information or a free brochure, call 800.SAY.NFPT or visit www.nfpt.com.
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March 7 2008
