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4 Abdominal Pitfalls to Avoid

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Published: 04May2007
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Let's face it. A sleek and well-defined midsection is something everyone wants to have. Six-pack abs are mainstream among the fitness community. A sculpted mid-section displays health, vitality, strength, and overall fitness.

If you read any magazine or online article you will be bombarded with an over abundance amount of information on how to achieve six-pack abs. Six-pack ab advertisements have even found their way right to your living room in the form of infomercials.

If you are not careful, you can be literally brainwashed into false ab information, leading you down a road of despair.

If you want to be on top of your six-pack ab game, first eliminate the myths, lies, and deception you have been fed by the so-called "experts" in the fitness industry.

Exotic Abdominal Equipment – Turn on your tube and you will be overwhelmed at the amount of abdominal equipment available. These fancy ab-devices can cost anywhere from 20 bucks to several hundred dollars.

Are they effective? Are they worth it?

Look at some of the top runners. Many elite runners have six-pack abs and some even have eight-pack abs. What is surprising to many people is that many runners don't even do ab exercises.

Is this shocking?

It shouldn't be. Everyone has abs. If you can't see your abs it's not that you are lacking a unique piece of abdominal equipment, it's simply because you have a layer of fat covering your abdominals, preventing them from showing.

Hundreds of Crunches – Okay, so we know you don't need top-dollar exorbitant abdominal equipment to get that well-desired six-pack abdominal region.

The top recommended abdominal exercise, recommend by the leading "experts" are crunches; hundreds of crunches a day.

Crunches are fine and dandy for developing the abdominal area, but it is useless to do hundreds of them. Some people can spend up to 20 minutes doing crunches and their abs still never shine though.

Don't overdo the crunches. Two to three sets of 10-25 crunches is all you need. Doing endless crunches is not going to make your abs peep through. All crunches will do is strengthen your midsection. When you lower your body fat your abs will be more visible.

Fat Burners – Many people are under the impression that fat burners burn body fat with little or no effort on their part. How nice that would be!

Fat burners can be helpful on a fat-loss program, but only if they are taken correctly and combined with the right nutrition and training program.

Fat burners should be used as a supplement, not the all-or-none factor.

Starving Yourself – Okay, you have the point by now that you need low body fat for your abs to appear. While this is true, you do not want to starve yourself. When you venture onto a starvation diet you aren't starving your body fat, you are starving your lean muscle tissue.

When your body must feed off its own muscle mass due to starvation your metabolism dramatically declines. This metabolic downgrade leads you to even more stored body fat.

Starving yourself is not the answer to a six-pack abdominal region.

What is the Answer to Achieving Six-Pack Abs? To get your sexy abs to shine you need to feed your body. You should eat a balanced meal (containing a protein and a carbohydrate) every three hours. This speeds up your metabolism and nourishes your body

Drink 8 – 12 ounces of water with meals and between meals. The more water you drink, the more toxins, fat, and sodium you are able to flush out.

Train your abs with a variety of ab-training exercise to prevent boredom. Abs can be trained every other day at best, provided they are not still sore from your previous workout.

Add some cardio to your program. Cardio, too, will help kick up your metabolism. Just be sure to avoid cardio-overdrive, which is doing too much cardio that prevents your body from recovering.

Manage food intake, drink water, and get adequate exercise, and you'll have a six-pack abdominal region in no time.

Karen Sessions has been in the fitness industry since 1988. She is a nationally qualified bodybuilder and holds two personal training certifications. She has written 6 ebooks on fitness and has helped hundreds of clients transform their bodies. http://www.theelitephysique.com "Use of this article is authorized provided it is reproduced in full, and all web URLS are active hyperlinks directed to the author"

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