Ab exercises

What kinds of ab exercises don't make your stomach become distended, or build the muscles outward causing you to look fatter? I heard if you do crunches they can actually push your stomach out. Is that just if you don't hold your "belly button to spine"?

 

belly button to spine?

crunches will not make your abs pop and make you look fat... If you have fat on your stomach forget any ab exercise you are doing and jump on a treadmill


What you should worry about is getting your bodyfat % under 10% and your abs will show. Endless ab exercises are literally pointless.

 

If you have belly fat, ab exercises are pointless. You can't really target a particular body part as you have to seek overall weight loss to first get the fat off of your tummy. Once this is achieved, then ab exercises are effective for toning the tummy. However, if you are only trying to find exercises to make your tummy flat, definetely do cardio. Cardio is awesome for getting a flat tummy. Walking is a more effective way of getting a flat stomach vs trying to do 500 crunches a day. Good luck!

 

Pulling your belly button towards your spine will activate the TVA muscle and this will promote a flat stomach.

I'm not a fan of crunches as I believe it places undue stress on the spine, but doing crunches will not make you look fat...

 

I have only tried a couple of exercises but I have a beer belly and have been told that it is pointless to do ab exercises until you have lost the beer belly? Can anyone tell me if this is true? I have been told by somebody else that sit-ups is a useless way of burning fat around my belly, is this also true?

 

It's not pointless to do ab excericses at any time unless perhaps if you have a back injury of some sort. Also, it is a useless way of burning fat around your stomach. Fat loss is generally more dependent on maintaining a caloric deficit then specific ab exercises.

 

I have been sticking to my workout for a couple of months now and my arms are looking bigger and more toned and my pecs have started to take shape, but my beer belly have not reduced one bit. Is there anything you could suggest?

 

Change your diet. Men store fat mostly around the abdominal area, this means the fat is literally hiding your muscles. Most often than not people are still packing in more calories than they need, thus even if you exercise you're not really loosing weight.

 

Well, you say you have gained muscle which suggests you are in a calorie surplus. You will not be losing belly fat if you are in a calorie surplus. Gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time is very difficult.

 

The only way your stomach will stick out if you how a lot of fat on there. There is not exercise to stop that from happening if your already fat. Start running to lose that fat first then start doing ab work.