Elements of Abdominal Anatomy: the abdominal wall can be primarily classified into two main sections; the front section made up of only one muscle (the rectus abdominus) and the lateral section made up of three layers of muscles (external oblique, internal oblique and the traverse abdominal).

The “rectus abdominus” (straight muscle of the abdomen) is a single broad muscle, although it is often erroneously classified into upper and lower abs. In reality, these terms only indicate areas of the straight muscle that can be stimulated though targeted exercises that still work the entire straight muscle of the abdomen.

1) Can You Exercise the Upper and Lower Abs Separately?

Although it may feel as though you can “isolate” the upper and lower abs (the rectus abdominis), you actually can’t contract one section independent of the other. Research that looked at the muscle activation while performing a basic crunch exercise found that you may feel more contraction in the upper abdomen because the muscle fibers in the upper part of the rectus abdominis shorten more than in the lower part of the muscle, but the entire muscle is, in fact, activated during the movement.

2) Can I Lose Belly Fat by Doing Lots of Crunches?

Unfortunately, no. Simply doing lots of crunches won’t reduce reduce belly fat. 

3) What Is the Best Abdominal Exercise?

One study that looked at the best and worst ab exercises concluded that:

• The Bicycle Crunch Exercise was the best for strengthening the rectus abdominis
• The Captain’s Chair Exercise the best for strengthening the internal obliques and the external obliques

1. Put nutrition first, then exercise

Realize that exercise alone doesn’t work. Yes you should exercise, but without the right nutrition, results will be poor.

2. Find your motivation

Find something that really motivates you. A real purpose. Why do you want to be in shape?

3. One small thing every day

Transformation will take time. Don’t try to change everything all at once. You will never be able to persevere. Take small steps and change one thing at a time. Step by step.

4. Make your commitments a little too easy

Most people try to change to much at once, and this quickly will become impossible. So choose one thing to change, and be confident that you can do it consistently. A habit doesn’t become a habit by practicing it only a few times. Scale you’re ambitions down until you’re 90% confident you can keep this new habit everyday? Once it become a habit, it will be easy to level it up.

5. Find someone to answer to

Look for someone at your side when motivation is low. Someone who picks you up. Your partner, a good friend,… someone you’ll be in contact with on a regular basis. We all need support.

6. Focus on behaviors, not outcomes

Focus on your daily actions. Focus on your workout, your diet, etc… Don’t focus on outcomes. Again, transformation takes time, so if you focus to much on outcomes alone, this can get too frustrating.

7. Track it and measure it

Measure you’re progresses from time to time. Take before and after picks, measure you’re waist, hips, arms and legs, weigh yourself weakly or get a body scan twice a year. Don’t do it to often, but monitor consistently and enjoy your progress. 

1.  Builds aerobic power

Your aerobic capacity is your body’s ability to work at maximum capacity by getting oxygen from the air to your body’s tissues. Ordinarily, people lose about 1 percent a year of their aerobic power. Both long-term and short-term exercise training studies show that you can cut this loss in half.

2.  Reduces blood pressure

Exercise helps reduce your blood pressure, in part, by attacking the plaque in your arteries. As the arteries widen, the blood flows through more freely, and your blood pressure eventually starts to drop. Plus, the stronger your heart muscle gets, the greater its ability to pump blood through the arteries, which also helps to reduce your blood pressure.

3.   Lowers Type 2 diabetes risk

By engaging in regular physical exercise, you improve your body’s ability to metabolize glucose, the key to staving off this disease.

5.  Reduces body fat

The more you exercise, the more you are able to work off your body fat because muscle “burns off” more calories, effectively speeding up your metabolism.

6.  Keeps bones strong

Another normal age-related change is the loss of bone mineral strength. Here again, the magic number of a 1 percent loss per year seems to be the considered wisdom of how fast our body’s bones get thinner and weaker. The specific form of exercise required for bone strength involves resistance training in which you lift weights.

7.  Builds muscle mass

Resistance training also builds your muscles. In fact, the tension of your muscles against your bones is what also helps your bones get the maximum benefit of weight lifting. If you don’t engage in regular weight-lifting, you’ll lose muscle strength at the rate of – guess what—1 percent per year. If you do, you can cut this – guess again—in half. Keeping your muscles strong also helps you stay more aerobically fit and helps you maintain a healthy lean (or fat-free) body mass.

8.  Improves breathing

Aging affects the tissues of the lung in some ways that can’t be changed by exercise. However, exercise can improve your breathing by strengthening the muscles that help your lungs open up to bring in oxygen and compress to push out carbon dioxide. Exercise also improves the efficiency with which oxygen permeates the cells of your body through its effects on aerobic capacity. 

9.   Boosts your energy

Because your body is functioning more efficiently, you’ve got more oxygen to fuel your body’s cells. You also feel fewer aches and pains and have greater strength. As a result, you can go about your daily activities feeling less fatigued, stressed, and weary. 

10.  Reduces the risk of arthritis

Arthritis occurs due to abnormalities in the cartilage and outgrowth of bones in the joints. Unlike the other physical benefits of exercise, reducing the chances of arthritis doesn’t depend on heavy duty aerobic activity or even weight training. In fact, you may actually heighten your risk of arthritis if you do too much of the wrong kind of exercise. Running on the pavement, particularly in shoes that aren’t appropriately cushioned, can cause you to be more likely to get arthritis. Instead, you need to engage in stretching and flexibility training through yoga, Tai Chi, or other ways to increase the range of movement of your joints. This will lower your risk of injury through muscle tears or torn ligaments, and in the process protect your joints from damage caused by overuse.

11.   Improves sex life

Keeping your muscles active through use helps promote the demands placed on your endocrine glands to produce more hormones. With more muscle mass comes greater stimulation to produce androgens which help both men and women maintain their sexual functioning. You are also likely to feel more fit and be more fit, which in turn will benefit your interest in and ability to carry out sexual activity. 

12.   Brings about better sleep

Exercise during the day benefits your sleep at night. The physical exertion you engage in during the day helps your body’s circadian rhythm keep in tune. 

13.   Improves mood

It’s a well-kept secret that people who exercise regularly also have lower risk of depression. Aerobic exercise improves your mood by causing your body’s endorphins to kick in. These are the natural “feel good” neurotransmitters that start to exert their effects after about 20 minutes of training. These regular exercise-related boosts eventually improve your overall mental health over the long term.

14.   Lowers anxiety

Related to exercise’s effects on mood are its effects on your levels of anxiety. As your levels of endorphins increase, your feelings of worry also start to diminish. When you exercise, you also refocus your attention from your daily problems to the workout itself.

15.   Feels like fun

If you find the kind of exercise that fits your personality and motivational needs, you can actually have a good time while your body does the work. Whatever your exercise style, once you get into a routine, you’ll find that the activity itself becomes rewarding. Perhaps it’s those endorphins or the benefits of social support from your gym-mates. 

16.   Reduces absenteeism

By improving your overall health, exercise can help you ward off both acute and chronic illness. You’ll get fewer colds and be less prone to the flu.

17.   Boosts memory

The effects of exercise on many of your bodily systems ultimately pays off in improving your cognitive functioning. Regular physical exercise helps your neurons stay in shape particularly in the memory areas of your brain. You don’t even have to exert yourself that much to experience this memory boost. Moderate walking can help your brain’s memory center, the hippocampus, maintain its health and vitality. Memory also benefits from a general lowering of cortisol, the stress hormone, associated with the improved mood and anxiety levels you experience from your regular workouts.

18.   Builds intelligence

Along with memory, your intellectual skills benefit from regular physical activity. As oxygen flows more freely to your brain, not only does your hippocampus benefit but so does the part of your brain involved in planning and reasoning (the prefrontal cortex). 

19.   Lowers dementia risk

Exercise lowers your chances for developing dementia based on cardiovascular illness because you’re improving the flow of blood throughout your body, including your brain. 

#source http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201205/19-reasons-exercise

Did a lot of reading about getting these most wanted abs…never ever had any abs before :-(

So this one is a really big challenge for me. I’m still struggling with my one-pack, although I already lost more then 8 kg/ 17.5 lb.

Here are some facts and myths:

. It is a myth that you can have these abs shown by just doing crunches. Apparently we all have abs, they are only covered most of the time by a layar of fat.

. To have visible abs, you’re body fat percentage has to be as low as 7 to 13 %. So more important then exercises, is your regime. The actual percentage depends from person to person. For some of us, abs will be shown faster then for others. I guess I belong to the second category. 

. Abs exercises will not lower your body fat. They will however strengthen your abs so that once you reach your low fat percentage, they become more visible. 

. Abs are like other muscles. After training they need time to recuperate. So, training your abs daily is contra productive. As with other muscles you train, you also have to put in variation.

. If it isn’t in you’re genetic cards, it might be an impossible goal. To get six-pack abs, you may have to drop your body fat to a level that is either a struggle to maintain or downright unhealthy. But hey, if you try at least you’ll have a flat tummy.

I wonder if I can post a picture of my abs in six months.

I recently added this 2 exercises to my weekly routine. I’m fitting them in my programme twice a week. Let me know if you also perform them and what the results are.

Movement 1: The Myotatic Crunch

I began my analysis by looking for common attributes in exercises that hadn’t worked. The shared feature of all the dominant exercises, in particular the floor crunch, is that they used no more than half of the full range of motion (ROM) of the abdominals. If you were to imagine yourself sitting in a chair, the prescribed exercises all took you toward your knees (crunch, floor sit-up) or brought your knees toward your chest with a straight back (roman chair, reverse crunch). I decided to ignore that fetal range of motion altogether for eight weeks and focus on the stretched position achieved with full back extension.
The result was the myotatic crunch, so named because it leverages the fully stretched position and the resultant reflex (myotatic reflex or stretch reflex) for a stronger contraction than I had been able to achieve otherwise. It didn’t take eight weeks to see a difference. It took three.
Since this exercise is also effective for recruiting the transverse abdominis (explained next), if you have to choose one exercise, choose this one. If a BOSU ball is not available, use a small Swiss ball (45–55 centimeters in diameter) or a pile of firm cushions. Using a BOSU or Swiss ball, ensure your ass is close to the floor, usually no more than 6” off the ground.

Then follow these steps:
1. Start with arms stretched overhead as high as possible (I overlap my extended hands as if in a diving position). Keep your arms behind or next to your ears for the entire exercise.

2. Lower under control for 4 seconds until your fingers touch the floor, the entire time attempting to extend your hands further away from the ball.

3. Pause at the bottom for 2 seconds, aiming for maximum elongation (picture 3).

4. Rise under control and pause in the upper, fully contracted position for 2 seconds. The arms should not pass perpendicular with the ground.

5. Repeat for a total of 10 repetitions. Once you can complete 10 repetitions, add weight to your hands. I tend to use books of different sizes. If female, I don’t suggest exceeding 10 pounds in added weight (see “Hourglass” sidebar on page 179).

Movement 2: The Cat Vomit Exercise

This exercise is dedicated to my ex-girlfriend. I want only the best for you, Angelina Jolie.
Unless you purchase a corset at the same time, doing crunches will not pull your abdomen in. The muscle fibers of the six-pack (rectus abdominis) run vertically. The muscle you want to target instead is called the transverse abdominis (TVA), the deepest of the six main abdominal muscles, which is composed of fibers that run horizontally like a belt. The TVA is nicknamed the “corset muscle,” and if your abs have ever ached from laughing or coughing, you’ve felt it working.

Unfortunately, laughing repeatedly in the gym will get you a straitjacket or a plate to the head, so here is the alternative:
1. Get on all fours and keep your gaze focused either directly under your head or slightly in front of you. Don’t arch your back or strain your neck.

2. Forcefully exhale from your mouth until all air is fully expelled. Your abs should be contracted from this forceful exhale. Full exhalation is necessary to contract the transverse abdominals, and you’ll use gravity to provide resistance.

3. Hold your breath and pull your belly button upward toward your spine as hard as you can for a target of 8–12 seconds.

4. Inhale fully through the nose after the 8-12 second hold.

5. Take one breath cycle of rest (exhale slowly out the mouth, inhale slowly through the nose), then repeat the above for a total of 10 repetitions.


There you have it: the myotatic crunch and the cat vomit exercise. Heave, groan, and be merry.

via Gizmodo

#source Thefourhourbody