Toning Abdominal Muscles
Written on: November 24, 2005
There are two important things to keep in mind when considering how you will tone your abdominal muscles. One is that you will never see your abs if your bodyfat isn't low enough, and two; you must keep consistently working the abdominal exercises.
The ab are one of those muscle groups that helps to have some genetic advantages from. Some people naturally have abs, but unfortunately a lot don't even know it because they have too much bodyfat; making them invisible. Therefore whenever people approach me asking for good exercises that will tone their abs, I first ask them what their diet looks like. Diet is 75% of the battle.
What type of diet do I need to tone my abs?
Well there isn't any special "ab building" diet out there. A diet that will help your efforts of toning your abdominal muscles is one which will allow you to drop bodyfat. In our fitness article index we have a lot of articles that touch more specifically on diets that will help you lose fat. But you basically need to operate on a negative calorie diet, meaning you must consume less calories than your body is burning for fuel. The calories that your body can't get from the food you eat, will come from fat stores. One of the primary fat stores happens to be most people's bellies. Your stomach is usually the first place that fat will begin to shed once you start eating properly. Check out our article index for more diet information.
What abdominal exercises should I perform?
The ab crunch is the single most effective abdominal building exercise. It is simple and straight forward, which is usually best in any walk of life. A lot of people pride themselves on doing these weird obscure ab workouts, which is fine for a change, but your core exercise should always be the ab crunch.
You can also purchase a swiss ball and perform a lot of the recommended abdominal exercises that come with it. A swiss ball can also help to "change the scenary" as it can be fun to use.
You can do a search on google for "abdominal exercises" and find a list of exercises that you can perform. Just remember to keep consistent and try to train them at least 3 times a week for 20 minutes a day. Doing this along with an appropriate negative calorie diet will ensure you will be able to tone your abdominal muscles with patience.
