For some hardcore practitioners, this is a non-existent question but abdominal exercises are not those that help reduce flab particularly if your workouts are targeted at getting flat abs.
Let me explain what the abs workouts actually do and if you are insistent, what you should really do in order to achieve great stomach.
Your Abdominal Muscles Are Utilized Only Partly First off, sit-ups are simple and free hand exercises practiced without using weights.
You will begin by lying down flat on your back with knees bent up.
You will slowly raise your head up, with both hands crossed behind your head, as much as possible in an attempt to touch your knees with forehead.
What happens here is your upward movement begins by actuating the abs muscles in a way such as to pull your whole of the upper body upwards.
At this precise time, the abdominal muscles are voluntarily trying to contract severely and experience a great deal of strain.
This is where we all make the biggest mistake of our lives.
All these years, experts had us believe that since abdomen is making enormous effort to contract against your weight and gravity, this is enough.
I would take this argument till the extent of believing that abs muscles also take part in the drills along with your backbone, back muscles, calf muscles and feet.
Let us see how much role abs muscles play in this practice in the following paragraph.
Role Of Abdomen And Ab Muscles In Abdominal Exercises You might remember that your physical trainer has told that you should lift your torso enough to be able to touch your forehead to knees.
Actually, in doing so, you are initiating your upward lift by actuating your abs muscles first and this pull by the abs goes on till you approximately reach a lift of 30 degrees.
Again, this is not as if the entire weight of your upper body is taken up by the abdomen, because what else do you think you have stuck you feet under a heavy furniture for? Try training these sit-ups with leaving your feet free on the floor and you will see what I mean.
So, do it slowly and you will feel the backbone and back muscles taking over from this point onwards.
What this means is abdominal muscles begin bulging outside once you crossed over that 30 degrees mark and relax till you reached your end point where they get compressed vertically.
Combining Obliques With Abdominal Exercises If you are serious on getting flat abs, make sure your abs training includes exercises for obliques also.
To do this, you have to repeat the very same abs exercises with your hands crossed behind your head and when you rise up, try to touch your right elbow to the left knee and vice-versa alternately on each repetition.
Combining this type of obliques with abs training drills up the entire torso and in the end works better than plain sit-ups.
This way, you are not only contracting your abdomen but also twisting it and each individual muscle.
A little innovation such as this spruces up your abdominal exercises by a lot.