Six Tips For Sexier Abs From An Experienced Brentwood Gym Instructor, PART 2

This four-part series provides detailed advice from experienced fitness experts on how to get the washboard stomach you’ve always dreamed of.

Welcome to the second installment of this four-part article series on how to tighten your midsection and get closer to achieving the sexy washboard stomach you’ve always admired in your favorite celebrities. In our previous article, Part 1, an experienced Brentwood gym instructor explained that the first place anyone should start is by improving posture. By aligning your ears, shoulders, hips and ankles with each other and by pulling your navel in towards your spine, you can appear leaner and more confident and get more oxygen into your lungs, thereby making you feel more energized.

What else can we do to look more like the chiseled splendor that is Matthew McConaughey? Let’s check out Tip # 2…

Tip for a Tighter Belly # 2: Work Out Your Whole Body

“Loads of people make the mistake of excessively training their abdominal muscles in an effort to tone and tighten their midsection,” says the Brentwood personal trainer. “While this will make these muscles stronger, you need to eliminate the fat overlying your abdominal muscles if they’re to show through and doing ten thousand crunches a day isn’t going to do this.

“What you need to do is view your body as a system with each muscle group facilitating strength, dexterity and motion in a fluid way that leads to the next muscle group. You should focus on strengthening the systems that surround your body’s core in three-dimensions. Instead of doing an excessive number of sit-ups, alternate slow resistance exercises with bursts of cardiovascular workouts. Circuit training is a highly effective way to blast stomach fat and tone abdominal muscles,” explains the Brentwood gym instructor. “This is the kind of exercise that will get results.”

So, the take home message is not to exercise your abdominals in isolation, but to work your body as a whole, including your legs, arms, glutes and back muscles. Alternating between resistance and cardiovascular exercise helps your body burn more calories and therefore fat.

Tip for a Tighter Belly # 3: Assess Your Diet and Digestion

“Even if you have excellent posture and powerful abdominal muscles, you won’t have a ripped stomach if you have a layer of fat covering it all up,” says the Brentwood personal trainer. “Your body is a system and in order for you to burn fat, your expenditure of energy needs to be greater than your input of energy. In other words, you need to eat less and train more. This is the only thing that will reduce body fat and reveal those toned abdominals you’re hiding underneath your beer belly.”

Good advice for better nutrition would be to eat salads and protein for lunch and dinner and restrict your carbohydrate intake to breakfast, when you’re going to need it the most for your day’s exertions.

Stay Tuned for Part 3

Want to read more about this Brentwood gym instructor’s best advice for getting that toned, tightened belly you’re after? Stay tuned for the third installment of this four-part series to read tip # 4 and # 5!