Recently I interviewed Mike Geary, the author of The Truth About Six Pack Abs, and I asked him why crunches aren’t the best thing to do to lose belly fat or get six pack abs.  Here’s what Mike had to say…

A lot of times the first thing people think of  when they want to get rid of their belly fat is they got to do some crunches, or do some sit-ups or do something that works the abs. But, I mean we all know by now that you can’t really spot reduce.

Basically when you’re just doing an abdominal exercise, you’re working a very small
portion of your full body, of your entire body. So that’s going to be directly rated to how
many calories you burn, and what kind of hormonal response you get from your workout.

So if you’re just working your abs, when you think about your body as a whole–arms,
legs, chest, back, you got a lot of muscle throughout your body that you could be
working. But instead you’re just focusing on this tiny area of your body in the abs. So
maybe you’re strengthening a muscle there, but you’re not getting rid of the fat.

That’s why when I talk about this a lot of times, I try and get people away from focusing
so much on the abs at first. We can get back to abs specific exercises later, and get…
That’s going to be a portion of your workouts too, and you definitely want to tone up
those muscles so they look good when you get rid of the fat.

But the stuff that gets rid of the fat is the bigger exercises, the stuff that really works the
largest muscle groups of the body. I mean when you do a squat or a deadlift, you’re
working just… When you do a deadlift, you’re practically working your entire body.
You’re working the legs, all of the muscles throughout your legs and your back, which
are the largest muscles in your entire body.

If you spend five minutes doing deadlifts, as opposed to spending five minutes doing crunches, you’re probably going to burn 10 times as many calories, plus you’re going to
be stimulating the release of fat burning hormones in your body, which is further going to accelerate your fat loss.

That’s what a lot of our programs are based on, is high-intensity combinations of full body workouts. So all of the squats, deadlifts, lunges, the upper body presses, the upper body pulls, all of the things that work your entire body as a whole. A lot of that stuff also works your abs, because your abs have to stabilize your body doing a lot of these exercises. Then we get into abs specific stuff too, but I just wanted to I guess point out that’s why I think the mentality needs to get away from abs exercises when we’re looking to lose stomach fat.

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