With summer upon us, everyone is increasingly conscious of his or her body and muscle tone. Summer is the time of year when we all tend to pay special attention to the abdominal area in our workouts, too. Getting great abs is no mystery, check out these four myths and use the information to maximize your workouts this summer, at Total Body Fitness or elsewhere.
Myth #1
You can work abs every day because they recover faster than other muscles.
The abdominals are a muscle, just like any other muscle. If you work your abs hard and break down the muscle, it takes time to rebuild and recover in order to gain strength and/or size.
Myth #2
You need to use super high reps to increase abdominal definition.
The short answer here is quite simple - you can do a thousand crunches a day but if your diet sucks, you'll never see any abdominal definition. Light weights and high reps are the tried and true way to gain long, lean muscle tone. However, this must be accompanied by a great, clean diet in order to shed the extra around your midsection.
Myth #3
You don't need to train your abs because they get enough work by being supporting muscles in all of my other exercises. They help hold me upright throughout the day too.
Does that mean you don't need to train your triceps or biceps because they support your chest and back exercises, respectively? If you want stronger abs, you have to work your abs!
Myth #4
You shouldn't train your abs with weight because it will make your abs look big, which will make you look fat.
The abs, anatomically, are a very thin muscle that can be very hard to enlarge. If you do work your abs to achieve a small amount of hypertrophy (muscle growth) and simultaneously decrease your body fat percentage - that's going to give you the six pack abs you want!