If you’ve been following my posts on the New York Times Best Seller, The Abs Power Diet for Women, you know we’ve talked about the ABS DIET POWER, a clever acronym to remember the foods to eat (ie. A = Almonds or W = Whey) or to just stay away from fake foods (when you can’t remember anything). We know The Abs Diet promotes 6 smaller meals a day and a focus on working muscles, as in more fuel and more muscle equals less flab.
What’s great to hear is the author Zinczenko beings his ab exercise formula by first starting and stressing the importance of working a very large muscle group in your body, which happen to be your legs, not your abs.
Most of your body’s muscles are found below your belly button, writes Zinczenko. Working these leg muscles “triggers the release of hormones that stimulate muscle growth throughout your body, kick your fat-burners into overdrive, and give you that thin-as-a-dime stomach you want.”
He goes on to share a Norwegian study where people who focused on lower-body work actually gained more upper body strength than a group who spent the majority of their time on upper-body exercises.
Who would have thunk. But that is great news for use water-lovers because most water workouts are 85% lower body, especially when it comes to water aerobics.
So much of what we think makes sense in health and fitness — drink 8 classes of water a day, always stretch before working out — well, some of it proves to be false. I remember one of my water aerobic instructors telling me when she started 20 years ago, she used plastic milk jugs filled with water as weights; in our field, we now understand the properties of using floating Styrofoam weights and working muscles opposite than you would on land due the laws of gravity, or the laws of buoyancy .
New or corrected studies and information is what makes fitness so interesting, and working out in the water is definitely cutting edge. Another interesting unknown I have for you is that you might not know an entire water aerobics class can be all about abs. Because 85% of the water workout is legs, and The Abs Diet just shared with us that working our leg muscles in various exercises stimulates muscle growth throughout our bodies.
It’s not about doing 1,000 crunches on land to get great abs. The headlining news is that getting great abs is really about having a holistic look at your body, from what you put into it to your posture to the exercise regime you choose. Think outside of the box.
Tags: ab workouts, diet, Water Aerobics, water workouts
Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 5:00 pm |
I just attended a seminar on spinal stabilization, and that has a lot to do with what you’re talking about here. Most of the muscles your body uses for stabilization (and, like you said, that includes proper posture) are in the core: the transverse abdominus, the obliques, the lats, the quadratus lumborum, the glutes . . . really anything between your chest and your knees helps stabilize and can be included in the core. And since being in the water–especially water aerobics–requires stabilization and balance, you really do get a good core workout (if you maintain appropriate posture while you’re doing the exercises).
But the bottom line for most of my clients is losing body fat. A lot of them have strong core muscles, but they’re buried under a little belly. The only way to lose that belly is to lose the body fat; if you can’t do that, no core work is going to help you get a six-pack stomach.