From Flabs to Abs in 5 Simple Steps

The elusive washboard stomach. Everyone wants it but almost no one has it. In a world where 50% of the people in a gym are performing some type of crunch or other ab exercise at any given moment, why is a strong, toned stomach so hard to achieve? The answer is pretty simple: There is no such thing as spot reduction in exercise. If you are making certain foundational mistakes in your nutrition and exercise programs, your body won’t shed the fat necessary to reveal the toned, tight stomach muscles you’re after (regardless of how many crunches you do). So here you have it, my five easy tips for transforming your flabs to abs this winter:

1. Use Big Bang Exercises: If you want a flat stomach, focus on big, high energy movements such as squats, dead lifts, cable pulls and various Swiss ball exercises instead of smaller, isolated movements. Because these big bang exercises recruit multiple muscle groups at once, they burn significantly more calories than a standing bicep curl or any exercise that requires you to sit on a machine. Although it might not look like it to an outsider, that single arm overhead split squat you're doing is actually an ab exercise.

2. Blast The Abs Hard At The End: Make sure you end (not begin) your workout with isolated ab exercises. Why? For starters, the abdominals are very important stabilizers in the body. If you exhaust them at the beginning of a workout, your chance of injury (specifically to your lower back) increases drastically. So, once you reach the END of your workout, blast your abs hard. The reason is simple: Because the rectus abdominis muscle (the one that creates the six pack effect) is composed predominately of fast twitch muscle fibers, it responds to high intensity (aka load) and high speed movements. In other words, doing 100 bodyweight crunches is a complete waste of time when it comes to creating a strong, lean mid-section. Instead, try a Swiss ball crunch (roughly 12 reps) with a weight on your chest, kneeling cable wood chops or a cable rope crunch if you want to effectively condition and tone your abs.

3. Detox The Right Way: You must eat organic food if you want to see a flat, toned stomach. Because toxins are stored in fat, to the degree that you eat non- organic, chemically treated, antibiotic and hormone fed foods, your body fat will increase. Toxins are transported to your liver when you bring in more toxic chemicals from your environment than your body can handle. As a protective mechanism, the body then stores the toxins in body fat to keep it away from your vital organs. In this way, if you are poisoning your liver, regardless of how hard you train, you will have a very challenging time reducing the body fat around your mid-section.

4. Stay Hydrated: Your body depends on water for almost every chemical reaction it undergoes. When you don’t drink enough, your body starts to store water in your tissue, making you look puffy and heavier than you actually are. So in order to avoid excess bloating, drink ½ your body weight in ounces of clean water daily. Tea, juice, coffee and other non-water drinks do not count! They actually dehydrate you or act as food in the body.

5. Cut Out The Grains: Your abs are what you eat. If you’ve been training hard but still have a layer of mush over your abs, there’s a very good chance that the problem lies in your diet. The easiest way to turn your flabs to abs is to cut out grains. Remember: the human digestive machinery was not designed to process grains. As a result, wheat, oats and even quinoa have all been proven to irritate the gut wall, causing inflammation (aka the dreaded pooch belly). So if you’re serious about leaning out your stomach, replace the grains at each meal with dark, leafy vegetables (which pack way more nutrients and health benefits per calorie).

Remember that the body is a system of systems. You can’t simply train one part of your body and expect it to look and function in a healthy way if you aren’t a healthy person! Stick to the foundational principles (eat only organic, drink enough water) and train the abs intelligently if you really want those washboard abs.