Thursday, January 29, 2009

Ab Machines - Reassessed

By Jose Loni

The truth about ab machines is that they won't give you ripped abs. Ab machines help strengthen abdominals but ripped abs are achieved by increasing our metabolism through exercises that train with resistance, watching our food intake and managing our stress to decrease excess body fat.

Overall resistance training has shown to increase the body's metabolism. The increased lean body mass that results from resistance training, increases the muscle's activity, which utilizes the excess body fat to fuel its needs.

Some ab machines don't even target the ab muscles directly and trains the hip flexor muscles instead!

Relying on ab machines to give us six pack abs should be reassessed. Practicing healthy eating habits like having small, frequent meals 5-6 times throughout the day is recommended to help keep our energy levels constant and prevent blood sugar highs and lows.

Lower total caloric intake by decreasing food portion sizes and eating 5-6 times a day. This helps stabilize energy levels and a lower total caloric intake, which allows the body to burn the food we eat as well as the excess body fat.

Controlling stress in our lives is another factor we need to consider. Stress has the ability to make our body store excess body fat in our belly area. The hormone Cortisol causes our body to react this way, so in order to keep that from happening we must decrease our stress levels.

Practicing yoga, deep breathing, tai chi and meditation can help manage stress and effectively decrease the storage of body fat in the abdominal area.

The truth is, ab machines can't give us ripped abs. But by increasing our metabolism, watching our diet and managing our stress in our lives, we can finally achieve ripped abs. - 16650

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