What’s the Biggest Myth in all of Fitness? Part I
23 June 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
That resistance training can spot reduce body fat…The industry lie that will not die
The Biggest Myth in all of fitness is the widely held belief that exercising a particular body part will melt away the body fat that lies atop that particular muscle or interrelated group of muscles. As one of my Old School Neanderthalic training partners used to say when expressing incredulity “Can’t be did!” The uninformed consensus prescription for developing that most highly sought of all fitness rewards, the ripped waistline, is as follows: perform lots of high repetition sets when working abdominals, the more the merrier. Perform ab work everyday and presto – that gut fat will melt as you work them mercilessly. Over a protracted period of time the ab-obsessed trainee develops a ripped, taunt, fat-free waistline. Wish it were so but it “can’t be did” unless nutrition is strategically aligned with exercise. You can crunch consistently, do leg raises of every type and variety, twist and whirl with a broomstick, perform any and all ab-specific exercises until the cows come home and other than the actual caloric cost of the particular ab exercises, there is zero correlation between ab work and ab fat reduction. Sorry about that and hate to be the bearer of bad tidings…wish it weren’t so but this is physiologic reality. How lovely it would be if we were able to lie down on the living room floor while watching TV and do, oh, say 4-5 sets till failure in the crunch or leg raise or whatever ab exercise you prefer and undo all the bad eating done during the day. The only way stored body fat is mobilized and oxidized is if the individual is operating in a caloric deficit: if you consume more calories than you burn off, what physiological incentive is there for the body to dip into emergency energy reserves call up stored body fat and use fat to power activity? None!
In reality, while a proper crunch will build and strengthened the underlying abdominal muscle matrix (a wonderful thing worthy of attaining) the actual caloric cost associated with the execution of the ab exercise is miniscule….probably 200-calories for an average size person. 200-calories ain’t Jack! A dish of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey is 625. Abdominal work does not magically melt away the visually obscuring layer of lard that prevents the world from seeing your six-pac. Mobilizing fat is primarily a function of precise nutrition. Optimally there is a delicate mix that melds diet and exercise. Combine hardcore weight training with killer cardio and wed exercise to a serious nutritional game plan. This is serious stuff for serious people. Unless we find the caloric tipping point (and this is a shifting target) nothing of any particular significance is going to occur. When it comes to attaining a fat-free waistline, nutrition gets you 85% of the way there. If you want a lean and muscular look hit the cardio consistently and weight train like your hair was on fire. Without a tight eating schedule you can be extremely powerful, extremely muscular, possess amazing endurance and still be incredibly fat! The National Football League is overgrown with huge, powerful, fit and freaking FAT! Hundreds of abdominal repetitions will not result in significant caloric expenditure when compared to a comparable amount of food energy. A 200-pound man could jog and sprint hard for 45-straight minutes and burn perhaps 800-calories. That’s a truly rocking 18-calorie per minute burn rate! Most folks would be hard-pressed to generate a 12-calorie per minute burn rate. So exercise by itself is NOT the answer! Part II - let’s get specific!
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