To get on the fast track to lose abdominal weight you really need to make some changes. You have to start being serious about your workout routine and your diet in order to make stubborn belly fat disappear for good.

To get a well toned mid section you have to learn the right way to exercise and the right foods to eat. You need to learn the tricks of the top trainers and put them to use in your life.

Pump it Up

Your workout should push you and your body. You should make sure you are pushing yourself every time you work out. Do not let up. Make it harder each time to help yourself progress.

Use weights when doing your aerobic workout to increase the resistance and the calorie burn. Using weights will help you build muscle, too.

Your workout should be up and down. Instead of pushing to the max for the whole workout you should work in intervals where you are going full force and then let up and relax and then get right back into full force. This type of interval training has proven to help your body more calories and more fat.

Work it

If you want a six pack then you really need to work your mid section. Once you lose the weight you want well developed muscles there so your six pack pops.

In order to do this you must work the whole abdominal and core area. This means working your upper and lower abs, your obliques and your back. You need a strong back to support the abdominal muscles.

Exercises to use are the regular crunch, the reverse crunch, the side bend and the plank. These exercises will work the whole core area to give you toned abs.

Diet

As mentioned, you need a good diet to help you drop the fat. To get a jump start on losing that abdominal weight you should start cutting out the foods that cause your stomach to bloat and your body to retain water.

Anything that contains a lot of sodium or salt should be banned right away. Soda pop is the biggest culprit of bloat and water retention because it is very high in sodium, even the diet varieties.
You should also cut out high fat foods and foods with a lot of sugar. This includes things like fried foods, white bread and fatty protein.

Speaking of protein, you need a good amount of lean protein in your diet everyday to help your body build muscle. Do not forget to make sure you are getting a little lean protein at every meal.

Weight Loss Exercise Principles

If you have read the article called href="http://www.weightlessproducts.com/free-weight-loss-articles
/exercise.html" target="_blank">Exercise: Essential, then
you can skip down to the next section, called How to do Interval
Training. Read on if you need a reminder of the basic principles
of exercise for weight loss.

Aerobic exercise is fat burning exercise. As you do some
activity using large muscles (legs, especially) that raises your
heart rate but still allows you to breathe normally, your body
will burn fat with the oxygen you’re breathing. However, your
body will only burn blood-sugar at first, because it’s easily
available. So, to get to the fat-burning stage, you have to
exercise for at least 20 minutes, preferably 30 minutes or more.
Walking and bicycling at a gentle pace are aerobic activities.

Anaerobic exercises are high-intensity exercises that get your
muscles working hard, and you will have trouble breathing. The
word “anaerobic” means “without air”, meaning that you will be
breathing fast, but still not getting enough oxygen to properly
fuel your muscles. This leads to muscle strengthening, but it
also means that you’re burning blood-sugar only, not fat, and
you end up with lactic acid that will make your muscles feel
like they’re burning. Weight training and sprinting are
anaerobic activities.

You can keep doing aerobic exercise longer than anaerobic
exercise, and you’ll burn about equal amounts of calories
overall doing either. Aerobic exercise burns those calories from
fat during the exercise. Anaerobic exercise only burns
blood-sugar, but burns a lot of fat later (the rest of the day)
to replace the energy. Is it possible to combine the two, so
that you can burn fat while exercising, and keep burning the
rest of the day? Yes, with Interval Training.

Exercise for weight loss works best with a proper diet: consult
the href="http://www.weightlessproducts.com/diet-products.html"
target="_blank">Weight Loss Diet for Men.

How to do Interval Training

The “intervals” in Interval Training are alternating periods of
high-intensity exercise with low-intensity rest periods. This
allows a person to keep exercising for at least 30 minutes to
kick in the effects of aerobic activity, but it is also intense
enough to strengthen the heart and provide the long-term fat
burning of high-intensity exercise. The idea is simple, but
ingenious, and amazingly effective.

You can do interval training using a time-measure or a
distance-measure. If you prefer to run indoors in a gym’s track,
then there is probably a clock to watch while running, so time
would be more convenient to keep track. If you prefer to train
outdoors, it may be inconvenient to look at your watch every few
seconds, so going by distance will probably be easier. If you
use time, you should run as fast as you can for one full minute,
then walk for two minutes. After that, run again for one more
minute and rest by walking for two minutes. Keep repeating this
three-minute cycle until 30 minutes have elapsed overall. If you
prefer to chart distance, you will want to run about a
half-mile, then walk for one-quarter mile, and keep alternating
that.

Benefits of Interval Training

World-class athletes already know that Interval Training is the
best way to improve almost every aspect of running performance.
The fist effect is that high-intensity leg exercise, like
running, will make your legs stronger. That means more muscle
mass, and each gram of new muscle will burn that much more fat
every minute of every day. The second effect of high-intensity
training is what people call “cardio”. That’s short for
cardio-vascular training, meaning that your heart as a muscle
will grow stronger. This will prevent many forms of heart
disease, as well as improving circulation, which has benefits
for many aspects of life.

The most important benefit of Interval Training is that it is
the single best way to improve your VO2-Max. That is the volume
(V) of oxygen (O2) that you take with your deepest breath (max).
VO2-max is the best measure of fitness and endurance. Increasing
your VO2-max with interval training will give you greater
endurance for everything you do, and the higher your VO2-max,
the less you will feel that heat or pressure on your lungs when
you exercise. Believe me, after interval training for a week,
you will know without a fancy test that your VO2-max is
improving, and soon you’ll feel the improvement with every
training session. It’s a great feeling.

Improving Intervals

Using the time method is better than distance to keep yourself
honest, because as you get faster, your half-mile will turn out
to take less and less time. So, to keep improving your
performance, and keep losing weight, you should either get a
stopwatch, or else keep making your running intervals farther
and farther (to make sure they still last a whole minute).

As your VO2-max increases, you may be tempted to make your
workouts last longer overall, or to make the high-intensity
periods last longer. You should do neither of these things. Your
goal should be to keep intervals of 1-minute of running
separated by 2-minutes of walking, and keep increasing the
intensity of each running interval. If you make every interval a
sprint for one full minute, and keep that up for 40 minutes, you
are already a superhero. Longer workouts risk breakdown of
tissues and a high burden on your kidneys and other organs. And
if you make each interval longer, you may not be pushing your
speed the most you can, which is where the benefits are.

At the other end of the scale, if you’re just starting interval
training, go easy. Too many men start off too fast and burn
themselves out within 10 minutes. That will not benefit you.
Warm up with a fast walk or a gentle jog for 10 minutes or so.
Then, try your first interval. It should be for one full minute,
but just try for a pace a little faster than a jog. Then walk
for two minutes. For your next interval, just try to maintain
that fast jog pace for another full minute. Then walk again for
two minutes. Don’t sit down or stop if you can avoid it, keep
walking to recover. On your third interval, try just a little
faster. If you can’t make it for the full minute, you have just
found out where your zone is. The key isn’t to try to sprint
right away and only be able to go for 20 seconds. You have to do
the full minute at a constant pace, as fast as you can sustain
for one whole minute. I guarantee that it will be pretty slow
your first time. But try it again the next day, and you will be
better. By the end of two weeks, you’ll be amazed how much more
fit you’ve become. I promise.

If you don’t think you’re up for Interval Training yet, read my
article on href="http://www.weightlessproducts.com/free-weight-loss-articles
/exercise.html" target="_blank">Exercise: Essential.

Exercise is an important part of your weight-loss equation. But
the most important part you can’t find in a gym, it’s the href="http://www.weightlessproducts.com/free-weight-loss-articles
/plan.html" target="_blank">Best Diet Plan for Men

It’s been said that personal trainers receive the majority of information from muscle magazines. What’s frightening is that they blindly apply this new-found (sometimes quite inaccurate) knowledge with themselves, or worse, their clients. Remember, don’t believe everything you read … sometimes a little knowledge can be very dangerous! Well, it’s about time as trainers that you at least start reviewing the references listed at the end of articles. There’s much to learn from these often-overlooked sources. And if there are none listed, then you must question its validity. It may take me just minutes to read an article, but hours to go through the references! Here are some nuggets of information that you may find useful:

Calf muscle strength in humans.

Trappe SW, Trappe TA, Lee GA, Costill DL.

Int J Sports Med 2001 Apr;22(3):186-91

Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University

PURPOSE: In an effort to measure strength characteristics of the calf muscles, 18 subjects (14 male, 4 female, age =34.3+/-2.4yrs) were tested using a specially designed torque velocity device (TVD). This TVD is a hardware interface with the subject’s lower leg which stabilizes the leg for calf muscle strength measurements.

METHODS: Calf muscle strength measurements consisted of 1) isometric force production at ankle angles of 80, 90, and 100 degrees of plantar flexion, 2) peak torque at six isokinetic angular velocities 0.52, 1.05, 2.09, 3.14, 4.19, and 5.24 rad x s(-1), and 3) a fatigue test consisting of 30 maximal contractions at 3.14 rad x s(-1). The greatest force production occurred at 80 degrees of ankle plantar flexion (148.5 +/- 40.2 Nm). Isokinetic force production ranged from 114.1 +/- 24.7 Nm at 0.52 rad x s(-1) to 16.8 +/- 6.5 Nm at 5.24 rad x s(-1). A fatigue test consisting of 30 maximal repetitions at 3.14 rad x s(-1) resulted in a 61 +/- 15% decline in force production. To assess reproducibility and day to day variation, measurements at 1.05 and 2.09 rad x s(-1) were made during five different trials in a single day and one trial per day for three days, respectively. The within subject coefficient of variation was 2.6 to 6.5% for reproducibility and 1.9 to 7.4% for day to day variation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lower limb and muscle biopsy specimens from the gastrocnemius (lateral head) and soleus muscles were obtained to examine the relationship between strength and morphological characteristics of the calf muscles.

RESULTS: Cross-sectional area of the primary plantar flexors (gastrocnemius and soleus) was 47.9 +/- 1.3 cm2 while muscle volume was 642 +/- 16 cm3. Muscle fiber composition of the gastrocnemius and soleus averaged 57 +/- 2 and 85 +/- 3% type I fibers, respectively. A poor correlation was found between fiber type and maximal isometric force production (r =0.38; p>0.05). However, calf muscle strength and muscle size was positively correlated (r = 0.76; p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that using the TVD interface to stabilize the lower leg is a reliable and reproducible procedure for the measurement of calf muscle strength.

This study reveals that the soleus is comprised of primarily type I fibers and the max. torque of the gastrocnemius occurs at a knee angle of 160º.

The effects of eccentric velocity on activation of elbow flexors: evaluation by magnetic resonance imaging.

Kulig K, Powers CM, Shellock FG, Terk M.

Med Sci Sports Exerc 2001 Feb;33(2):196-200

Department of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, University of Southern California

PURPOSE: To compare magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signal intensity changes in the primary elbow flexors during two isotonic exercise protocols varying in eccentric velocity and the ratio of eccentric to concentric activity.

METHODS: Twelve men performed two exercise protocols. The right and left arms were randomly assigned to one of two protocols that had the same workload (60% 1RM) and same total time of exercise (144 s) but differed in the velocity and ratio of eccentric to concentric activity (1:1 and 5:1 for the fast and slow protocols, respectively). MRI signal intensity changes were quantified pre- and post-exercises using an inversion recovery sequence with a 1.5T MRI system (TR = 2500 ms, TE = 90 ms, TI = 140 ms). Percent change in MRI signal intensity, rate of perceived exertion (RPE), and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) were recorded and analyzed.

RESULTS: The biceps brachii was found to be preferentially recruited during the fast protocol compared with the brachialis, whereas the brachialis was found to be preferentially recruited during the slow protocol (P < 0.05). The fast exercise protocol was perceived as being more strenuous (RPE = 8.3 +/- 2.1) than the slow (RPE = 5.4 +/- 1.5, P < 0.05) and produced DOMS in 58% of the tested subjects.

CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that agonists respond to various loading conditions nonhomogeneously. These findings may have implications with respect to exercise prescriptions for specific muscles.

This study indicates that velocity can alter recruitment patterns during an arm curl.

For more information on these topics, read my article Pop ‘Em Out Muscles … and don’t forget to check the references!