A new study examined the effects of abdominal exercises on belly fat, with results that may shock you. Contrary to popular belief, there was found to be no significant effect of abdominal exercises on body weight, body fat percentage, abdominal circumference, and suprailiac skinfold measurements. What this means is that proper nutrition and cardiovascular activity is necessary to reduce body fat, not excessive amounts of sit-ups and crunches.

The researchers took 24 healthy individuals who were randomly assigned to either to an abdominal exercise group or a control group. The abdominal exercise group performed 7 abdominal exercises, for 2 sets of 10 repetitions, 5 days a week for 6 weeks. Despite the extreme amounts of direct abdominal stimulation, no body fat was found to be lost as a result. This does not mean you should stop working your abs, however. Muscular endurance and development does indeed improve in response to abdominal exercise. The problem is that in order to clearly see the abdominal muscles, you need to have a low body fat percentage.

Some excellent forms of fat-reducing exercise include High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which can be performed in as little as 15 minutes with a fat-burning effect that lasts for up to 30+ hours after its completion.

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21804427

Forget for a moment that the shape of your midsection largely determines how good you’ll look on the beach this summer—and how well you’ll play volleyball. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

The pursuit of abs goes deeper. You strive for a six-pack as if your life depended on it, and now science proves that it does. At a meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, research was presented declaring that waist circumference is more conclusive than either weight or body-mass index (BMI) as a measure of disease risk.

Miami cardiologist Arthur Agatston, M.D., author of The South Beach Diet, puts it this way: “Abdominal fat is different and more dangerous than fat elsewhere. Unlike fat directly under the skin, belly fat, which adheres to organs, is associated with increases in C-reactive protein (CRP) and other markers of inflammation that can lead to heart disease.”

Motivated yet? Good. We trust you’ll lay off the fries and onion rings. Remember, if your body fat is too high, it doesn’t matter how wisely you work your abs—they won’t show. (For most men, anything over 10 percent body fat keeps your abs in hiding.)

For the next month, work your abs according to the following steps and try this eating tip from Nancy Clark, R.D., author of Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook: “I make two peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches every day; I eat one for lunch at 11 and one for my second lunch at 3,” Clark says. Notice that the 3 o’clock feeding is a “second lunch,” not an “afternoon snack.” Too many men equate snack time with, well, snacks—junk food. You’ll eat smarter (whole grains and muscle-building protein) and not need as big a dinner if you allow for a second lunch. Plus, you’ll have more energy for a better workout in the afternoon or evening.

This, in turn, will keep your insulin levels steady. When insulin is in excess (from too much sugar and not enough exercise), it can turn on you, depositing fat into your gut. Or worse. “When the pancreas burns out after years of producing excess insulin, that’s when buildup begins in arteries; that can cause heart attacks and strokes,” Dr. Agatston says.

But enough scary stuff. Time to hit the gym—and then the beach.

Train with 2 Types of Exercise
Some abs exercises are based on movement. Others focus more on balance, so your abs contract harder to keep your body stable. “Most men have difficulty with either stabilization or mobilization,” says Carter Hays, C.S.C.S., a Houston-based personal trainer and a performance-enhancement specialist for the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Include both types of moves in a workout to challenge your abs.

For instance, try performing a Swiss-ball rollout (mobilization), followed by a Swiss-ball crunch (stabilization). To do the rollout, kneel in front of the ball with your forearms pressed against it. Keeping your knees and feet in place, roll the ball in front of you so your hips, torso, and arms slide forward. Advance as far as you can without arching your back, then pull back to the starting position.

Get More from Your Cardio
Strip away abdominal fat by switching around your cardio routine so you run hard early. In a study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, eight men ran for 30 minutes on 2 separate days.

In the first session, the men ran at a relatively high intensity—80 percent of their maximum heart rate—for 15 minutes, then slowed to 60 percent for the final 15 minutes. In the other session, they ran the slower part first.

The men burned 5 to 10 percent more fat when they ran faster at the start of the workout. “And this is only a 30-minute workout,” says Jie Kang, Ph.D., the study’s lead author. “If you extrapolate that to a longer workout three to five times a week, things can add up.”

Here’s why it works: To burn fat, your body first breaks down fat tissue into fat molecules. “Our study found that this works better when your abs exercise is done at a relatively high intensity,” says Kang. Next, molecules go to your cells to be burned, which Kang says can occur at relatively lower intensities.

The best part: You’ll feel as if you’re burning fat easier than ever. Kang measured the participants’ perceived exertion—how hard they felt they were working. Turns out the body feels fatigued late in a workout, regardless of what you do.

Stay Hydrated
This one’s almost too easy, but drinking plenty of water not only helps you burn fat, but also builds more muscle. “All creatine does is force fluid into the muscle,” says Hays. “Your body will do that itself if there’s enough water available.”

Skip the Bonus Abs Routine
Edging closer to sharp abs can tempt you to work them every day. Don’t. Training more can actually make your abs show less. “You don’t need to overwork your abs—they’re no different from any other muscle,” says Hays. “If you’re always in a state of overtraining, you’re going to get more laxity in your muscles.”

In other words, they’ll appear soft. Instead, add resistance to make moves you already do more challenging. For instance, hold a light weight plate during a Russian twist or Swiss-ball crunch. Then give your muscles time to rest.

Do More Total-Body Exercise
Isolation moves like crunches are great for developing your muscles, but they don’t burn much fat. You’re better off training multiple muscle groups at once, says Hays. Total-body exercise burns more calories and also causes a greater release of muscle-building hormones.

Try combination moves, like the reverse lunge to cable chest fly. Stand between a cable station’s weight stacks and grab a pulley handle with each hand. Hold your arms straight in front of you. Then step back with one leg, bend your knees, and let your arms move out to the sides. Pause when your back knee is just off the floor and your upper body looks like a T, then push yourself back up while you pull your arms together. Repeat the move with your other leg in the back position.

Get Off the Floor
Define the lower portion of the rectus abdominis (your six-pack muscle) with a Swiss-ball reverse crunch, but instead of doing the move on the floor, hop on a bench. “It allows for a greater range of motion,” says Gregory Joujon-Roche, C.P.T., president of Holistic Fitness, in Los Angeles.

Lie faceup on the edge of a bench with a Swiss ball pinched between your heels and hamstrings. Keeping your abs drawn in, roll your pelvis off the bench and, maintaining the same knee angle, bring your knees toward your chest. Slowly lower the ball. As soon as your back begins to arch on the way down, that’s the end of your range of motion. Pause at this point for a few seconds before finishing your set. Try five sets of 15 to 20 repetitions.

Go Deep
Abdominal muscles are multilayered, but most men focus only on the outermost layer with exercises like the crunch. So look for moves that work the abdominal muscles closest to the spine, such as the plank. Strengthening these tiny stabilizers will provide a solid foundation to allow your six-pack muscles to grow stronger and bigger. For more exercises, check out The Abs Diet Online. It also provides you with a nutrition plan designed by our experts to target that pesky midsection. Join today.

World-renowned spine specialist Stuart McGill recently referred to the Swiss-Ball Stir-the-Pot as the best core exercise you can do. Try it once, and you’ll start to see why: It’s hard. Make that really hard. That’s because it combines two elements that leave your abs screaming: instability and dynamic movement. This combo allows you to work your rectus abdominis (a.k.a. six-pack muscles), obliques, and all of the muscles that help stabilize your spine from just about every direction. The upshot: an ab workout like you’ve never done. Ready to try it? Watch the video above to learn how to do the Swiss-Ball Stir-the-Pot with perfect form.

Everybody wants a toned body, but what does it really take? Endless crunches will get you nowhere, and neither will those silly ab gadgets that are seen on television screens across the world. Crunches are closely associated with a defined abdominal section, so how could it be that crunches aren’t to thank for a chiseled six pack?

Muscle definition occurs only with fat loss. All of the crunches and ab exercises in the world will only serve to build the abdominal muscles, which will not be visible if there is a layer of fat covering them. In order to have visible abdominal muscles, you must shed the fat covering them. Unfortunately, a myth has been widely spread that you can lose fat in a specific area through muscle targeting.

This myth is called spot training, and it has been proliferated by ignorant gym-goers.

Spot Training Is A Lie

Spot training implies that if you do a specific exercise, such as crunches, that you will lose fat around your abdominals. When losing fat, the body determines where the fat will come from. Doing crunches or any other muscle-building exercise does only that, builds muscle. It could help the muscle become larger and be seen slightly more through the fat due to its mass, but that’s about it.

In fact, sometimes crunches are hardly a muscle building exercise. When crunches are done in repetitions of 50 or 100, it is simply a cardiovascular exercise for the most part.

Sure, there is muscular fatigue and breakdown, but extremely high repetitions are done for endurance. While abdominal muscles are somewhat different from other muscle groups such as the biceps, you would never do a set of curls consisting of 100 repetitions each. Why are abs so much different? They’re really not. Some muscles respond to higher volumes of training such as the calf muscles.

With the calf muscles, it is not uncommon to find athletes doing high repetitions. The abdominal muscles are unique from muscle groups such as the pectorals or the triceps, but they still will not respond to high volume training. Only losing fat will make them visible!

There Are Actually No Lower And Upper Abs

Physiologically speaking, there are no lower and upper abs. The Rectus Abdominus, Internal and External Obliques, Transverse Abdominus, and the erector Spinae are the components of the abdominal trunk. All of them have separate functions, but none of them work to lift the legs.

Doing leg lifts to work the “lower abs” are actually working muscles that work to flex the hip. Working the abs can be as simple as doing weighted crunches for a lower number of repetitions (8-12), or doing compound lifts such as deadlifts. Remember that even if you have massive abdominal muscles, they simply will not be visible unless you shed the fat! Get your nutrition in check and lose the fat around the abdominal region.