Run-Down Forums

[dancingdonkey]

Hi !
I dance and run and have a very healthy diet. I am having problems in toning up my stomach and was wondering if you have any suggestions please? I do crunches and situps and it just seems to be getting tighter but not flatter! please could you help!!!!

Thank you

[Dan]

What do you consider a healthy diet to be? How's your caloric intake compared to expenditure?

Ab work builds muscle, but it doesn't target fat for burning. You need to be burning net calories for that to occur.

Dan
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[Paul]

Let me suggest a couple of exercises:

1) This one's very simple. Almost all ab work involves the outer muscles. Position yourself on your knees and hands on a mat, and simply pull your stomach in toward your spine, so you almost look like a greyhound. Hold this for 5+ secs and release. Do 10 reps working up to 10 secs. Sounds easy, but you will be perspiring and more fatigued than you thought.

2) Sit on a bench with a dumbell on your left (or right) side. Pick it up with both hands, swinging it in front of you as you place it back on the bench on the other side. This should take about 3-4 secs. Actually allow the weight to rest back on the bench for a sec before you pick it back up to swing back around to your original side. Pick a weight that you can do about 20 reps with on the days you lift. You will be surprised at how this will affect you. This has been one of the best exercises I have added to my strength training this year. I have been doing a set of crunches to pre-exhaust myself before doing this, and I'm now using a 45 lb dumbell for 12 reps.
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Paul

"Gaunt is Beautiful" Cassidy's T-shirt

[Dan]

Those are good exercises. Do you recommend having the arms extended straight out on #2? I'm thinking it doesn't much matter, as a lot of the gym machines for that sort of thing have the hand grips designed so that your arm is bent at the elbow.

Dan
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[Paul]

You raise a good point, Dan, concerning this exercise vs one done on a machine. A machine places all the resistance in the twisting motion. The exercise with the dumbell places tremendous stress on the stablizing structures of the upper back: traps, scapula, rhomboids, even the biceps. So, the farther out you hold the dumbell, the more pressure on those structures. I usually start the exercise about a foot away from my body and try to move out to a foot and a half on the last few reps. That's in relation to the weight when passing directly in front of the body. I think I'm running with a more stable torso after doing this exercise over the past few months.
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Paul

"Gaunt is Beautiful" Cassidy's T-shirt

[Dan]

Ok, that makes sense. It's the old free weight vs. machine debate, with machines continually getting their butts kicked.

Dan
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