Don’t do any ab exercises until you can see your abs. Ab exercises don’t burn belly fat. They build the muscle underneath it, and if you still have belly fat, that makes your belly bulge out more.
Listen: I know most of you came here for ab exercises, and I know most of you probably don’t have abs right now. That’s okay. That’s exactly why I’m telling you this now, because it’s going to save you a whole lot of time.
Do ab exercises burn belly fat?
No. There’s no such thing as spot reduction. You can’t do crunches and lose fat specifically from your stomach. If I do an hour of ab exercises a day, that isn’t going to focus in on my belly fat. It’s going to burn fat evenly across my entire body. As much as we all wish it worked that way, there’s no burning fat only from your stomach.
What ab exercises actually do
Ab exercises build up the muscle beneath the fat. If you’re already lean, that makes a huge visual difference. Building even a millimeter of muscle on your abs when you’re lean makes a massive difference, and it makes a big difference in your functional strength too.
If you still have belly fat, it doesn’t make any positive difference. It makes a negative one. Build the ab muscle up before those muscles are visible, and your belly bulges out more.
The Chuck Liddell example
Remember Chuck Liddell from the old UFC fights? He’s obviously an athlete, with an incredible amount of core muscle. You have to have it to wrestle and box like he does. But despite being a pro athlete, he looked like he had a little beer belly.
Here’s why. He wasn’t lean, and he was doing a tremendous amount of ab work, building the muscle beneath the fat. That’s what creates that look.
What to do instead until you can see your abs
- Put the crunches and toe touches on hold. They train the six pack muscle under the fat.
- Do stomach vacuums. They train your transverse abdominis, the deep muscle that pulls your waist in, so your stomach looks smaller. Here’s how to do a stomach vacuum.
- Get lean by eating fewer calories. My top 10 tips for getting six pack abs cover exactly how I do it, from fasting until 2 p.m. to cutting liquid calories.
- Once you can see your abs, train them. That’s when ab work makes a massive visual difference, and it’s when I train abs every single day.
Get lean first, and every ab exercise you do after that pays off.
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This is general fitness information, not medical advice.
