Video highlights:
00:14 – Should I be doing 1,000 sit-ups a day to get a flat stomach?
00:28 – Most people don’t have the time to train multiple times a day
00:51 – Focus on doing the big exercises
01:08 – Doing countless sit-ups is pointless if you have fat over the top
01:41 – Mix up endurance and resistance type exercises
02:27 – Exercises that give you six pack abs
02:59 – Let’s figure out how much fat you need to lose to get that flat stomach
Transcript:
Mark: Hi! This is Mark and Stephen Gray. And you’re listening to TheDVCC.com, the place to be if you want to lose weight and tone up! Today, we’re going to be answering the question posed, “Should I be doing 1,000 sit-ups a day to get a flat stomach?” Now, we get asked this a lot and it really does depend on your situation. So, basically, if you are a professional athlete or a figure model or a model in general, you’ll be able to train multiple times a day.
And then, doing abdominal crunches, sit-ups, that kind of thing is worthwhile because you’ve got the time to do all the other things. However, if you’re like Stephen and I and probably most of the population, you don’t have the chance to train multiple times a day. And therefore, you need to spend the time on the biggest bang for your buck exercises, the exercises that you can do to get the best results in the shortest period of time. And that is the big things like squatting and lunging. Basically, the big exercises that are going to burn most of the calories and have you losing fat from the stomach.
Stephen: The one thing that actually should be mentioned though is that it doesn’t matter how many sit-ups you do if you have body fat over the front of your stomach. So, even if you were able to train 10 times in a day and you thought you’d do 1,000 sit-ups maybe, what happens is you will not see those abdominal that you’re actually working if you have fat over the top.
Mark: Now Amanda’s also said that she actually likes feeling the burn in her stomach when she’s doing the stomach exercises, and that’s great. And if you do just love feeling the burn in your stomach, then totally, go ahead and do the stomach exercises. But what I suggest you do is you mix them up. So you want to be doing what’s called exercises. That’s basically exercises to build the muscle, to improve the muscle tone. So you’re doing exercises with resistance. You’re basically doing between 8 and 12 reps under resistance so you’re struggling to get the total reps. But you want to be mixing that up also with endurance type exercises. So that’s basically 15 reps, repetitions plus. And normally, you’re probably not able to do these with resistance, but sometimes if you are strong, you are. But you want to be mixing those two up. And we’ve not trained our abdominal honestly in pretty much about 7 years.
Stephen: About 7 years.
Mark: The only time we ever really trained them was towards the end of when we were doing the fitness modeling. And that was just purely because of the shape of them. It wasn’t actually to try and get a six pack. So, we found that doing squats – like we said, squats, lunges, the dead-lifts, the big exercises, have really enabled us to keep a six pack or have a six pack because we’re constantly using those muscles to stabilize ourselves.
Stephen: Well, for one, they help you burn body fat, which obviously you need to get rid of to be able to see a flat stomach. And two, they do actually work those muscles as well. Because like Mark says, you have to really stabilize your body when you’re doing big exercises. So your abdominal and the core muscles that you have tend to be one of those stabilizers so they do get worked.
Mark: Now, if you want to, come on in and find out how much body fat you have to lose to be able to get a flat stomach. We have a very special machine that will enable us to see your fat distribution, and also, how many months or weeks or how much pounds of body fat you need to lose to be able to get a flat stomach. Simply put a comment in the box below with your name or just saying “yes” and we’ll be able to contact you and invite you in to either Bedford or Milton Keynes Centres.
So, this is Stephen and Mark from TheDVCC.com
