Crunches... really not working!!

Billabongfitz

Whats the best simple exercise to tone your stomach? trying crunches but they either dont work or kill my back!!

any advice

amazingemmet

No exercise will tone you unless your talking about mycogenic tone but chances are your not. ONly way to "tone" the stomach is to lose some/ a lot of bodyfat.

Billabongfitz

amazingemmet wrote:

No exercise will tone you unless your talking about mycogenic tone but chances are your not. ONly way to "tone" the stomach is to lose some/ a lot of bodyfat.

I was told that i have to get my BMI down to a certain percentage, any ideas on how to do this? or rather how do you lose the neccessary body fat.. im not an inherently fat person! any healthy diets, workouts you can suggest?

g'em

Billabongfitz wrote:

I was told that i have to get my BMI down to a certain percentage, any ideas on how to do this? or rather how do you lose the neccessary body fat.. im not an inherently fat person! any healthy diets, workouts you can suggest?

Stickies.

daveirl

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rubadub

Billabongfitz wrote:

I was told that i have to get my BMI down to a certain percentage, any ideas on how to do this? or rather how do you lose the neccessary body fat.. im not an inherently fat person! any healthy diets, workouts you can suggest?

BMI is related to height & weight. Most bodybuilders would be considered obese using BMI.

Gillo

g'em wrote:

Stickies.

DAVEIRL wrote:

Good girl

In fairness he's new, an explaination of stickies may have helped.

Billabongfitz look at the top of the forum, the first few threads are called stickies they are permanently kept at the top and have useful advice regarding the forum.

brianthebard

Billabongfitz wrote:

I was told that i have to get my BMI down to a certain percentage, any ideas on how to do this? or rather how do you lose the neccessary body fat.. im not an inherently fat person! any healthy diets, workouts you can suggest?

Whoever told you that may have meant to say Body fat percentage. As far as I am aware (and open to correction) you need to have a body fat precentage of 10% or lower (probably lower) if you want ab muscles to how. That is of course assuming you have ab muscles to begin with, they are harder to develop than just knocking out some crunches at the end of a gym session...

Billabongfitz

brianthebard wrote:

That is of course assuming you have ab muscles to begin with, they are harder to develop than just knocking out some crunches at the end of a gym session...

Ok, so presuming i have ab muscles, and want to get my body fat percentage down any suggestions of how to do that? specific work out plans diets etc.

rubadub

Read up the stickies and see what suits your lifestyle. To lower your bodyfat, you have to use up the fat you are carrying. To put it simply you have to use more calories than you take in. You could eat less, taking in less calories, or exercise more burning more calories. The best way is to do a combination of both. Building muscle has a 2 fold effect, you burn calories physically lifting around weights, then your body uses up calories building new tissue (just like a pregnant woman needs more calories while "building" a baby).

I have a BF of about 14%, below average for people my age & sex, I still have a gut though! it is the last thing to go on most men.

chrismon

brianthebard wrote:

Whoever told you that may have meant to say Body fat percentage. As far as I am aware (and open to correction) you need to have a body fat precentage of 10% or lower (probably lower) if you want ab muscles to how. That is of course assuming you have ab muscles to begin with, they are harder to develop than just knocking out some crunches at the end of a gym session...

Iv got a body fat percentage of 14% and iv got very toned AB muscles,but then iv always been doing core excercises

brianthebard

Are your ab muscles visible as a six pack though, or are they strong but under a layer of fat? You can have the best abs in the world and still not be able to see them.

kanibus

Billabongfitz wrote:

Whats the best simple exercise to tone your stomach? trying crunches but they either dont work or kill my back!!

any advice

Heres what I do in the gym..

- 30 Crunches (2.5 seconds up, 2.5 seconds down; Go slow, and feel the burn go deeper)

- 15 Reverse Crunches (Again, slow. Very slow. Do the regular crunches first, so you tire your upper abs out some, making your lower abs work harder on these)

- 70 Crunches to each side, touching your elbow to the opposite knee (SLOW)

- 30 Side Bends (Squeeze your abs when doing these, and remember(SLOW)

- Pick up 5kg medicine ball, sit down with back and legs straight at 90degress and twist upper body side 2 side while holding the ball out straight...this works the obliques.Keep going till it hurts!

- "Up Downs" lie flat, hands behind head,keeping legs straight bring them upto 45 degrees and back down without touching the ground..Works lower abs..There difficult so just do as many as you can.




****P.S. Dont use incline benches or have people stand on ur feet while you crunch becuase it doesnt work your stomach...it just tightens your hip flexers!:cool:

daveirl

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davyjose

kanibus wrote:

Heres what I do in the gym..

-
****P.S. Dont use incline benches or have people stand on ur feet while you crunch becuase it doesnt work your stomach...it just tightens your hip flexers!:cool:

Good tip dude

DublinEvents

You could try exercises involving hanging from a bar in such a way that your stomach is stretched. That might help.

g'em

daveirl wrote:

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I was wondering would anyone reference the Dave Tate project!!! ooh.. that reminds me of another thread... I'm stealing those pics

daveirl

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joejoem

daveirl wrote:

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By the looks of things he also covered himself in brown shoe polish

g'em

daveirl wrote:

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I know, and did you see the most recent updates? The changes in his blood work are unreal . How the hell he hadn't had coronary failure before cleaning up his diet is incredible, and 10 months later they're textbook perfect.

tribulus

g'em wrote:

I know, and did you see the most recent updates? The changes in his blood work are unreal . How the hell he hadn't had coronary failure before cleaning up his diet is incredible, and 10 months later they're textbook perfect.

and he still looks like a monster!

I don't think dave tate did many crunches, but what he did do was plenty of very heavy squats, deads and benching and his abs are pretty huge.

So heavy compound exercises to help build ab muscles and a lower bodyfat for them to show through

g'em

tribulus wrote:

So heavy compound exercises to help build ab muscles and a lower bodyfat for them to show through

yup. ok, so I didn't have abs like Dave Tate at the end of my cut (probaly a good thing... being a girl... and half his size :rolleyes: ), but I still got a pretty obvious six-pack from training the same way. I think I did maybe four direct ab sessions over the 8 weeks? There's still heaploads of arguments flying around about ab training, but the general message is: if you want to see your six-pack, lower your body fat. The bigger your ab muscles (from heavy compounds/ heavy direct training) the higher body fat you'll get away with while retaining visible abs (but it'll still need to be loooow!!)

tribulus

yeah i think the current g'em is a hell of a lot hotter than a 250lb version! Though god knows what your deadlift would be then!

g'em

tribulus wrote:

yeah i think the current g'em is a hell of a lot hotter than a 250lb version! Though god knows what your deadlift would be then!

ewwwwww- a 205lb g'em?? EEEEWWWW!!!!!

Mind you, going on bw ratios... that'd bring my DL to 475lb (215kg)!!!!. Nah, think I'll stick to lean me and see what I can work with

t-ha

daveirl wrote:

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One of the good things about having thousands of ng/dl of test floating around your blood-stream & a lean body mass of around 250lbs.

daveirl

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Vegeta

t-ha wrote:

One of the good things about having thousands of ng/dl of test floating around your blood-stream & a lean body mass of around 250lbs.

ok after seeing t-ha's post I am just wondering have any of you had your blood work done to check test levels and the likes

tribulus

I wouldn't see the need to tbh , i'm young, eat reasonably clean without much saturated fat and get a good amount of exercise, maybe if I was juicing it'd be a different story.