If you are like many people you would like to see your abdominal area looking like the proverbial six-pack. And like many of those folks you may think that you can “sit up” your way to those abs, or maybe crunch them into existence and that is just plain impossible. Unless you have a low body-fat percentage those abs are never going to peek through for the world to see. Two problems arise with this quest.
Attainable..with effort and diet
The first problem is the disproportional exercise done to your core. Concentrating on your abs is a great way to do permanent damage to yourself. You have to think about your core (or any area of your body for that matter) as a balancing act, because that’s what it is. Consider someone walking a tight rope and one end of that balancing pole keeps getting weight added. Gradually they are getting twisted and bent over in the opposite direction trying to counter that additional weight.
Your body does the same thing, but you don’t see it externally until the damage has been done. You are working and tightening and strengthening your abdominal muscles and internally you are pulling your body forward at the waist. This is causing all kinds of stress on your spine and all the connecting tissues – tendons and ligaments. You have to work your lower back to compensate for any abdominal work you are doing, and if you think about it a shapely lower back is also quite a sexy attractive thing.
I stress this sort of thing all the time. You have to look at your muscles as a push-pull system, so if you look at any joint, there are two distinct muscles that work in tandem with each other providing the locomotion. You have to work these muscles proportionally – maybe not in the same day/same workout, but definitely proportionally.
Moving on to the second problem with the “ab quest” people tend to do the same exercises over and over again hoping that their persistence will pay off. Now don’t get me wrong I am all about persistence, but you have to mix things up to get results. The body is an amazing piece of equipment and it adapts extremely well to the tasks it is presented. So if you do the “same old same old” day in and day out your body will be less impacted by the activity.
You have to challenge your body by shocking it with something totally different every few times. This is why professional body builders (and others) do lots of variations for the same muscles or muscle groups. For the chest it might be something as simple as going from a flat bench press to an incline, or switching from a barbell to dumb bells. It can be just as simple as that for your core exercises. Look around the gym or around your home and think about how you can do things a little bit differently, and don’t forget that push-pull balance. That is very important for long term health.
