BryantheRyan.com Challenging conventional wisdom about nutrition, fitness and overall health

Spring Break Special: Creating an Ab Canyon

Spring Break is on the horizon and so is the ever looming question of how to get that washboard stomach. Should we do yoga? Use an Ab Lounge, Roller or Twister (?)? Do we have to do crunches till we are blue in the face or run 5 miles a day?

The answer to all of these questions is a resounding no.

Absolutely no popular belief on how to get abs is true. Trust no one, except for me of course. And Drew Baye:

"Contrary to the idiotic recommendations of most current ab training books, courses and group class instructors, it is neither necessary nor beneficial to perform dozens of high rep sets of a wide variety of abdominal exercises. You also don’t need different exercises for your lower and upper abs, and you don’t need stability balls, special slings, benches, or any other gimmicky crap. In fact, you don’t need any direct abdominal exercise at all to get ripped abs. All that is necessary is to reduce body fat to very low levels, and that has far more to do with diet than exercise."

*My Bold

Conventional wisdom on ab creation.

Popular belief holds true that we can build up our ab muscles in hopes that they will magically break through our wall of stomach fat and shine through like a beacon in the night sky.

This is called "Spot Loss".  Which is a fairy tale idea that by exercising one area of the body, we will intern force that area to become thinner. I'm sorry, but this is simply untrue.

Our bodies are whole, connected systems. When we lose weight, our entire bodies are affected, not just one area.

How funny would it be to see a human being with Queen Latifa thunder thighs and a Megan Fox torso? This obviously would never happen because our bodies won't let it happen.

Many gym rats tend to think that doing 30 minutes (or more) of ab work a day is necessary for their abs to become defined. Again, wrong.

The abdominal muscles are physiologically thin. Our abs cannot be built up and our belly fat cannot be minimized simply by working our mid-sections.

Drew Baye (who I mentioned earlier), an athletic trainer in Orlando, Florida, who also runs a great fitness blog at baye.com, attacks conventional ab wisdom by arguing: "People who recommend performing long abdominal workouts involving dozens of exercises either don’t know what they’re talking about or are making things more complex for the sake of sounding more knowledgeable than they are."

The Truth

When we view abdominal definition with only a shred of common sense, we see that the reason our abs are not seen is because of the layer of blubber that insulates them. How did this fat there? By eating of course.

The creation of fat is simple. Eating the wrong kinds of foods (sugar) equals excess energy and fat storage.

OK, it's not that simple. We do however understand the underlying causes of weight gain. Or so we think.

Neglecting to do crunches your whole life is not the reason why your abs are not protruding. It has everything to do with what you ate.

Unfortunately the human body stores fat in the stomach area. This truly sucks.

A close friend brought this phenomenon to my attention. She stated that our bodies are pre-programmed to store more fat in the stomach region. Why? Because many of our most important organs are located in the abdominal region. These organs are very delicate and must be protected in case of a traumatic event. Our bodies are in effect protecting us from harm by storing fat in the belly area.

Counter Argument

The argument can be made that "Hey, I'm burning calories when I do ab work!" All I have to say is this: Anybody who honestly believes that any significant amount of energy is needed to sit on the ground and contract their mid-section, needs to stop reading Men's Health and actually LEARN about how the human body operates.

Don't eat that bag of Doritos or get a 6 inch sub instead of a foot long at Subway and you will save yourself a lot of time pretending that you are "burning off" those calories.

I use the term "burning" because that is the term that we associate with exercise and calories. In fact, no burning of any kind happens. We like to believe this because it provides a nice visual, but in truth we are wrong.

This is a topic deserves the time and attention of an entire article, but I will give a quick preview as not to leave you all in the dark.

First of all what is a calorie? "The energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius." According to my MacBook dictionary. What the hell does this have to do with nutrition and exercise? Nothing.

Ever wonder how the amount of calories in food are determined? A machine called a calorimeter is used. A food product is placed in this machine along with a thermometer and proportionate amounts of water.  The product is then burned. Each degree that the thermometer rises equals a calorie!

What has the world come to?

When we exercise, we do not burn calories. We simply use ATP (all living organisms basic energy molecule) as energy. The human body does not burn anything, we digest.

Their is much more I would like to write about this process so I will save it for another article.

Now that I have strayed completely off topic.... Lets get back to ab talk.

Ab "Exercises"

For those of you who exercise on a regular basis, you already work your abs enough. This comes without conscious effort. Performing lifts such as squats, standing presses, pull ups, chin ups, and pretty much all exercises that require us to stand engages the abdominal muscles.

I understand that this may come as a shock. So next time you lift weights or workout pay special attention to your abs. You will notice that they are not relaxed.

We do not need to finish a workout with an abs circuit or any other mode of what I like to call "peace of mind" exercises. The belief that our abs even need to be exercised separately than the rest of body, proves yet again that what we deem as correct exercise is far from the way the human body actually operates.

What muscles do you think keep us standing upright while running on the treadmill? The same muscles that prevent us from tipping over when we perform a set of squats.

Final Thoughts

What we eat is far more important than how we exercise. If your looking for a quick fix in terms of ab definition, you can either 1) Not eat for a week or 2) Come to the realization that all great benefits of the human body take time, be patient and eat right.

Always remember Oscar Wilde's quote "Everything popular is wrong." I love saying the words embrace it, so I will say them again...embrace it.

-Ryan

PS. I wasn't joking when I said that Drew Baye's blog was awesome. If you want to get more real, common sense fitness advice click here.