3 Reasons To Avoid the Six-Pack Trap
Three Reasons To Avoid The Six-Pack Trap:
Why Six-Pack Abs Are Overrated
As a fitness & sports performance coach, I’m about to commit heresy here. Well, to some, its heresy. To me, it’s pointing out some common sense. It seems to me that today, from fitness club members to young athletes, there is a bombardment of hope & praise in achieving a “Six Pack Abs” appearance, equating it to good health, performance, even increased sex drive. I’m sorry, but this madness just has to be pointed out by someone, and I guess that someone is me.
Here are 3 reasons why going after a six-pack abdominal section appearance is keeping many from reaching other goals in their fitness endeavors & performance aspects for sports:
1. “Core Training” becomes more of an emphasis than TOTAL Training. I get questions from everyday people who become more obsessed about obtaining this ‘Six Pack” look for their stomach, trying to tie every aspect of their training into how they will get this appearance. Even athletes, in which some are even in junior high & high school, they will ask me questions on how many crunches/sit-ups/leg raises to do each night in order to get this look. Folks, I have to tell you, if you do too much core training, that is abdominal and back work, you will be allowing the rest of your body to miss out on all the benefits of training. Here’s a typical situation: the client asks me about their routine, consisting of “Some Cardio, 30-40 min, 3-4 times a week, some machines, and a lot of ab work. Is this right?” Well, if you’re asking me if it’s right or not, something must be wrong about it in the first place. This type of situation is largely focused on fat loss, more than it is about increasing strength & fitness. Why? Because a majority of the workout routine explained to me just screams out “I’m trying to lose fat in my midsection by doing too much cardio and core work, while I am doing very little for the rest of my body.” In my opinion & experience, when the whole body is trained, the whole body becomes a stronger unit, and a better performing unit that works in unison to help out with overall body fat loss. Unfortunately, we are still stuck in the Myth-Filled Worldly Advice that “Spot Reducing Is Possible”. Despite numerous studies & research PROVING that spot-reducing efforts are futile, we have 30 minute infomercials that people believe like its gospel truth and fall victim to buying ab gadget after ab gadget, year after year. If you want a trimmed body, you have to have an encompassing approach for letting your entire body work FOR you, not against you. Total Body Training is the answer here, and it works well for both fitness folks & athletes.
2. Core training routines may create imbalances in strength. This is loosely tied in with the first point, in ways that too many folks will do too much abdominal work, and not enough lower back/hip work to balance out those efforts. It is no different than the man who wants a better looking chest & arms, who does 10-12 sets of chest exercises, and only 3 exercises for the pulling actions of the back muscles. What you have is a stronger chest, and a much weaker upper back. The abs can fall into this same trap, mainly because they are ‘mirror muscles’ like the chest & arms are. Guys especially get trapped up in this and do more ab work than lower back work, creating huge imbalances in strength between the two simple actions of bending forward, and bending backward. I speak of this from experience, because back in high school while training for basketball, I would spend 15 minutes a day on abdominal work with a routine I got from a book. I had abs of steel, but a lower back as strong as spaghetti. My lower back took a killing, being beat to heck from all the rigors of basketball. Only later would I realize after I went to college just how imbalanced my workout routine was at that time. Like I mentioned about Total Body Training, you have to have a well-balanced approach to training your entire body’s push & pull actions, bending & twisting actions, and squatting & lunging actions.
3. Excessive Core Training may lead to eating & dieting issues with people. Just as the exercise can become obsessive for the core region, the dieting can also wreak havoc on a person. This is both true for fitness enthusiasts and athletes, especially on the athlete side of things. Athletes are perhaps more at risk for eating disorders because of the obsessed nature of some sports with weight issues. You have wrestlers who will starve themselves on food & water, just to cut weight to wrestle in a lower weight class. You have gymnasts who live strict lives with dieting & training regimens. Even coaches can cause harm with just mere comments of: “If you lost some of your body fat, you could be faster & more agile out there.” Boyfriends & girlfriends can cause issues, too, by saying “You have too much belly fat on you.” These types of comments can trigger responses of doing excessive exercise routines and extreme dieting habits, all for the sake of losing some fat around the midsection.
All in all, I feel that is performance values are focused on, moreso than weight & body fat percentage numbers, everyone would be fitter, stronger, and looking just the way they should be. As a fitness professional, I have grown very tired with all the bombardments of advertising and marketing for this ‘six pack’ look, mainly because I feel it is misleading people with their exercise efforts. It seems every fitness magazine has a core training article of ‘6-Pack Abs: Fast!’ title on the cover. We see cover models with air-brushed midsections, arms, & legs, furthering the campaign of ‘Sell them what they want, not what they need.” I feel with high quality training that is focused on increasing fitness levels & strength levels, the human body will end up being what it truly was meant to look like, not what someone else or society wants you to look like.
I recently went to a 1 day religious retreat on the life of St. Paul, and the priest giving a talk said it best while quoting from Genesis: “And God looked at everything He made, and saw that it was very good.” We are all very good people inside, and we need not be pushed, prodded, or manipulated into being something that we may not become. This “Vanity Now!” approach to training for fitness & even for sports performance has to stop, and we need to get back to focusing on performance & fitness objectives.
-----------------
The Countdown to a Faster Mile Begins at:
http://asapworkouts.com/321.pdf
Why Six-Pack Abs Are Overrated
As a fitness & sports performance coach, I’m about to commit heresy here. Well, to some, its heresy. To me, it’s pointing out some common sense. It seems to me that today, from fitness club members to young athletes, there is a bombardment of hope & praise in achieving a “Six Pack Abs” appearance, equating it to good health, performance, even increased sex drive. I’m sorry, but this madness just has to be pointed out by someone, and I guess that someone is me.
Here are 3 reasons why going after a six-pack abdominal section appearance is keeping many from reaching other goals in their fitness endeavors & performance aspects for sports:
1. “Core Training” becomes more of an emphasis than TOTAL Training. I get questions from everyday people who become more obsessed about obtaining this ‘Six Pack” look for their stomach, trying to tie every aspect of their training into how they will get this appearance. Even athletes, in which some are even in junior high & high school, they will ask me questions on how many crunches/sit-ups/leg raises to do each night in order to get this look. Folks, I have to tell you, if you do too much core training, that is abdominal and back work, you will be allowing the rest of your body to miss out on all the benefits of training. Here’s a typical situation: the client asks me about their routine, consisting of “Some Cardio, 30-40 min, 3-4 times a week, some machines, and a lot of ab work. Is this right?” Well, if you’re asking me if it’s right or not, something must be wrong about it in the first place. This type of situation is largely focused on fat loss, more than it is about increasing strength & fitness. Why? Because a majority of the workout routine explained to me just screams out “I’m trying to lose fat in my midsection by doing too much cardio and core work, while I am doing very little for the rest of my body.” In my opinion & experience, when the whole body is trained, the whole body becomes a stronger unit, and a better performing unit that works in unison to help out with overall body fat loss. Unfortunately, we are still stuck in the Myth-Filled Worldly Advice that “Spot Reducing Is Possible”. Despite numerous studies & research PROVING that spot-reducing efforts are futile, we have 30 minute infomercials that people believe like its gospel truth and fall victim to buying ab gadget after ab gadget, year after year. If you want a trimmed body, you have to have an encompassing approach for letting your entire body work FOR you, not against you. Total Body Training is the answer here, and it works well for both fitness folks & athletes.
2. Core training routines may create imbalances in strength. This is loosely tied in with the first point, in ways that too many folks will do too much abdominal work, and not enough lower back/hip work to balance out those efforts. It is no different than the man who wants a better looking chest & arms, who does 10-12 sets of chest exercises, and only 3 exercises for the pulling actions of the back muscles. What you have is a stronger chest, and a much weaker upper back. The abs can fall into this same trap, mainly because they are ‘mirror muscles’ like the chest & arms are. Guys especially get trapped up in this and do more ab work than lower back work, creating huge imbalances in strength between the two simple actions of bending forward, and bending backward. I speak of this from experience, because back in high school while training for basketball, I would spend 15 minutes a day on abdominal work with a routine I got from a book. I had abs of steel, but a lower back as strong as spaghetti. My lower back took a killing, being beat to heck from all the rigors of basketball. Only later would I realize after I went to college just how imbalanced my workout routine was at that time. Like I mentioned about Total Body Training, you have to have a well-balanced approach to training your entire body’s push & pull actions, bending & twisting actions, and squatting & lunging actions.
3. Excessive Core Training may lead to eating & dieting issues with people. Just as the exercise can become obsessive for the core region, the dieting can also wreak havoc on a person. This is both true for fitness enthusiasts and athletes, especially on the athlete side of things. Athletes are perhaps more at risk for eating disorders because of the obsessed nature of some sports with weight issues. You have wrestlers who will starve themselves on food & water, just to cut weight to wrestle in a lower weight class. You have gymnasts who live strict lives with dieting & training regimens. Even coaches can cause harm with just mere comments of: “If you lost some of your body fat, you could be faster & more agile out there.” Boyfriends & girlfriends can cause issues, too, by saying “You have too much belly fat on you.” These types of comments can trigger responses of doing excessive exercise routines and extreme dieting habits, all for the sake of losing some fat around the midsection.
All in all, I feel that is performance values are focused on, moreso than weight & body fat percentage numbers, everyone would be fitter, stronger, and looking just the way they should be. As a fitness professional, I have grown very tired with all the bombardments of advertising and marketing for this ‘six pack’ look, mainly because I feel it is misleading people with their exercise efforts. It seems every fitness magazine has a core training article of ‘6-Pack Abs: Fast!’ title on the cover. We see cover models with air-brushed midsections, arms, & legs, furthering the campaign of ‘Sell them what they want, not what they need.” I feel with high quality training that is focused on increasing fitness levels & strength levels, the human body will end up being what it truly was meant to look like, not what someone else or society wants you to look like.
I recently went to a 1 day religious retreat on the life of St. Paul, and the priest giving a talk said it best while quoting from Genesis: “And God looked at everything He made, and saw that it was very good.” We are all very good people inside, and we need not be pushed, prodded, or manipulated into being something that we may not become. This “Vanity Now!” approach to training for fitness & even for sports performance has to stop, and we need to get back to focusing on performance & fitness objectives.
-----------------
The Countdown to a Faster Mile Begins at:
http://asapworkouts.com/321.pdf
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