Saturday, January 3, 2009

Crunches - The Truth

By Jose Loni

The truth about crunches! We all seek answers to achieving ripped abs. The truth about crunches is that they are good for our abdominal muscles, but they will not give you the ripped abs that you want. To get ripped abs, you need to work on fat burning exercises that will burn overall fat, watching what we eat and eliminating stress from our lives.

Doing crunches may be stopping you from getting six pack abs because it doesn't focus on what needs to be trained. Crunches strengthen, stabilize and develop the abdominal area. But to get six pack abs, we need to focus on overall fat burning.

Overall fat burning exercises are activities that allow us to train our whole body to increase our metabolism. By increasing our metabolism, we are better able to burn fat and utilize the excess belly fat, which results in more visibility of the abdominal muscles.

Lean body mass is increased as a result of resistance training. The increased muscle mass increases metabolic activity and helps the body burn more fat, which is required to fuel increased activity.

Our diet plays an important role in getting six pack abs. Eating smaller portion meals more frequently throughout the day allows our bodies to maintain energy levels and stabilize our blood sugar. Also, eating better quality foods, well balanced in protein, carbohydrates, fat, minerals and vitamins, will help us to achieve our goal of six-pack abs.

Stress affects our bodies in a way that makes our bodies react in an emergency mode. When our bodies are in a stressful situation, Cortisol is released and causes fat to be stored in the abdominal area.

There are activities that are effective in reducing our stress. Activities like yoga, tai chi and deep breathing have all been shown to decrease stress in people.

Crunches, in truth, are good for you but to achieve defined ripped abs, we need to understand we need to focus on other factors. Activities like resistance training, watching what we eat and eliminating stress from our lives, will help us achieve our ripped six-pack abs. - 15485

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