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On
Spot Reduction
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Let's suppose you're driving around with a 55-gallon drum of crude oil in your trunk. Even though your engine uses gasoline and gasoline comes from crude oil, your engine still can't use that crude oil for fuel. You would still have to get fuel that's convenient and in a usable form. You would still have to go to a gas station even though you had a form of the same thing right there in your trunk. |
Your body works similarly.
Even though there may plenty of fat directly above your abs (nothing personal!), the muscles cannot use fat that's in that form.
Abdominal exercises, inner thigh exercises, etc. do not directly burn fat in those specific areas.
When a muscle uses fat as a fuel, that fat can come from anywhere in the body. Typically it comes from the fat cells that were deposited last.
That stored fat, known as adipose tissue, is then sent to the liver where it is broken down into a form that muscles can use, free fatty acids (FFAs).
These FFAs are then sent to the working muscle through the bloodstream.
In other words, the abs and thighs can't even use the fat above them directly. Any fat used by a muscle must be broken down to FFAs in the liver first.
The simple truth is that you have no more control over where you lose fat than you did over where you gained it.
Fat is deposited in a genetically predetermined order that cannot be changed by any specific exercises. Abdominal exercises and outer and inner thigh exercises will not necessarily get rid of the fat in those areas.
Have you ever seen an overweight dog or cat? Where are they fat? In the abdominal region!
That's where all higher order organisms store excess fat - around their internal organs.
Now have you ever seen a lean dog or cat? Do you think they got that way from doing crunches?!
Your best bet for losing fat is the combination of the right eating plan for you, full-body strength training focusing on the largest muscles in the body - the legs and lats - and high intensity cardio (tempo runs and interval training) mixed with occasional long, slow distance (LSD).
Read our related
article: Inner Thigh
Lies
Recommended Resources:
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Shape Shift: Achieving the Athletic Look (with a special CORE TRAINING chapter by me) |
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Afterburn: Extreme Fat Loss Training by my friend, colleague and multiple co-author on other projects, Alwyn Cosgrove |
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Stephen Holt Fitness Lutherville, MD 21093 410-453-6295 |