Looking in the mirror, you will notice that some body parts tend to accumulate fat faster than others. For some, it is the butt whereas for others, the tummy moves to first place.
We could find many reasons why it’s important to get rid of fat. Gym goers want to get ripped; ordinary people improve their health, party animals wear a tight and fashionable t-shirt without the bulging belly, etc.
Today, we are going to focus on one of these fatty areas. You can take one guess and I am sure you will be right.
Yes, it’s the tummy!
Why?
You can search Google for fat, check images and you will see what people are worried about… For this reason, I’ve chosen the lower tummy.
There are some very interesting facts, studies, and suggestions about lower belly workouts. I am keen on sharing them with you to help you to stay in better shape.
Why do you want to target your lower tummy?
I tried to think about this question for a moment. Based on my training experience, below are three of my assumptions.
- You want to burn off the fat of your lower tummy.
- Get more shredded abs.
- Try something new in everyday workouts.
However, something inside me tells me that most of you are interested in the first point.
Fat burning
Before we take a closer look at workout and exercises, I would like to give you some insight into the fat burning process.
You can perform dozens of exercises, buy the latest gadgets, build your muscles but your fat level will stay almost the same. The fat will hide the beauty of your muscles.
What is the solution?
How to lose weight on the tummy and get shredded abs?
Overall, it is simple. You should cut down on eating and get plenty of exercise. In order to compensate food deficiency, the body will start to burn off stored fat. To sound more serious, I can use clever terms like calories and say that you should expend more calories than you consume.
Usually, people underestimate the benefits of diet and that is one of the reasons why they fail. Trust me, it is very difficult to get into a calorie deficiency only with exercising unless you are a professional athlete. Instead of exercising, focus more on your diet. You can easily cut down on calories by reducing a meal size or choosing less calorie-dense food.
Yes, it really is that simple. 60 – 80 % of successful weight loss depends on diet.
I want to warn you that you could feel hunger pangs during a calorie deficit. Especially, if you like to eat a lot … like one large pizza in a meal. It’s a common problem during weight loss. Some people can’t deal with hunger pangs and cravings. This results in mindless eating, cheating themselves and a breakdown of their weight loss plans.
Be strong, control yourself and you will get results.
Spot reduction
It would be so nice to lose fat only in a particular body area. However, we don’t live in an ideal world. There are many discussions about spot reduction among coaches. For this reason, you might even hear conflicting viewpoints. We can look into some studies but they also show different results. For me the question remains unclear.
Although the information differs depending on the source, I’ve come to some conclusions of my own. Yes, you can lose fat in a certain area. However, the overall effect isn’t very noticeable and I don’t work much on it until the rest of me is in good shape.
Why is it possible?
During a workout, our body releases some hormones in the blood, which helps to improve weight loss. You can increase blood flow to certain areas by exercising. More blood means more hormones and more hormones means better weight loss.
I have a detailed article about this topic. You can find it on my website.
The bottom line is not to worry about spot reduction but rather focus on diet and workout in general.
Ok, I hope you still feel great and we can continue exploring the lower tummy workout and exercises.
Lower abs
Our body has around 650 muscles, which can be further classified into the muscle groups. In order to keep your body in balance, you should exercise all muscle groups equally. In particular, the largest like leg, chest and back muscles.
Under your tummy are ab muscles. Even though abs are a small muscle group, they still play an important role in your body. For example, they stabilize your core and bend your spine. Many muscles form the abs, however, I want to name only two of them. Situated at the front of the abs are the rectus abdominis and stretching along the sides are the obliques.
By the term lower abs, we usually understand the lower part of the rectus abdominis and external obliques. Yes, that is the area where we can find the love handles and most of the belly fat.
Can we target particular ab areas?
Now, we should look closer at the rectus abdominis.
Different nerves trigger this muscle. At least in theory, this could give us some chance to activate particular muscle areas separately.
Moreover, the rectus abdominis is separated by tendons which result in a ‘six pack’ appearance. This unique anatomy could give us other possibilities to exercise different ab muscle areas.
However, these both look more like assumptions. We should go further and check out these theories!
Therefore, I provide you with a round-up of studies about the best lower ab exercises.
Lower Tummy Exercises
Today, I want to share with you information regarding the best lower ab exercises from three different studies. I hope this will make your exercising better and triple your workout’s effectiveness.
German Study
I accidently stumbled across this study while I was looking for the best back exercises. A German study includes electromyography (EMG) analysis for many gym-goers during their favourite exercises. As long as we want to target the lower tummy, I focus only on the finest lower ab exercises.
Top 3 lower ab exercises:
- Hanging leg raises.
- The beetle (German: Käfer).
- Extended arm crunch.
I suppose the most exotic exercise for many could be the beetle. I’ll try to explain it. At a glance, it looks similar to bicycle sit-ups. However, as you can see from the picture below the hand positions between exercises differ. For this reason, it requires more coordination to perform the beetle. I suggest you try out this exercise.]
The Glute Guy – Bret Contreras
Bret Contreras is a sports scientist who has many articles about buttock training. He carried out a series of EMG analyses to test and find out the best exercises for every muscle group. This experiment also included ab exercises. Bret examined many popular exercises for ab muscles – rectus abdominis, internal oblique and external oblique. He came to the conclusion that the best exercises for our midsection are:
- Turkish Get Up.
- Chin Up, Hanging Leg Raise, Weighted Swiss Ball Crunch.
- Ab Wheel Rollout, Bodysaw, RKC Plank.
- Kneeling Cable Lift, Tornado Ball Slam, Landmine, Reverse Hyper.
What about lower ab exercises?
Bret indicated the possibility of targeting different parts of the abs. However, he didn’t focus on this topic in much detail. Providing you are interested in the lower tummy exercises, I suggest you try some of:
- Chin Up.
- Hanging Leg Raise.
- Ab Wheel Rollout.
- Bodysaw.
Not all of exercises would be appropriate for beginners. Adjust and choose exercises according to your fitness level.
ACE
Finally, I am going to look over what the American Council of Exercise (ACE) revealed about the best ab exercises. There was one thing that their studies differed from the other two. They didn’t detect any difference between lower and upper ab muscle activity. Thus, we cannot clearly identify the best lower and upper ab exercises. However, below I have listed the top 5 exercises which ACE considers to be the most effective. I made the list in random order from the two studies.
Top 5 ab exercises by ACE from the first study:
- Captain’s chair crunch.
- Bicycle maneuver.
- Vertical leg crunch.
- Crunches on exercise ball.
- Reverse crunch.
Top 5 ab exercises by ACE from the second study:
- Decline Bench Curl–up.
- AB Roller/Wheel.
- Traditional crunch.
- Captain’s chair crunch.
- AB straps.
One interesting fact about these results is that some machines also showed good muscle activity during a workout. For this reason, we can’t say that all ab machines are only a waste of money. I’ve sometimes heard this assumption.
Lower Tummy Workout
Before I describe some workout routines, I want to remind you about an essential.
If you want to reduce weight, focus on your diet and full body workout. You will spend more calories while performing multi-joint exercises like squats, press-ups or pull-ups instead of just ab exercises.
Ok?
You can work out your lower tummy either at home or at the gym. I would advise that prior to a lower tummy workout, you do some exercises for the larger muscle groups like legs or back. Do these exercises in moderate intensity. It will help to release some essential fat burning hormones into the blood.
Workout at home
1
Bodyweight squat 2 x 15 – 30
Push-ups 2 x 10 – 20
Repetitions depending on your training experience.
And now you can do lower tummy exercises:
Reverse crunches 3x 15 – 35
Bicycle maneuver 3x 15 – 30
Traditional crunch 3x 10 – 30
2
Bodyweight lunge 2x 15 – 30
Triceps dips 2x 10 – 20
Repetitions depending on your training experience.
And now you can do lower tummy exercises:
Bodysaw 3x 10-30
The beetle 3x 10-30
Vertical leg crunch 3x 15 – 35
Workout at the Gym
1
Barbell squat 2x 10 – 15
Lat pull down 2x 10 – 15
Repetitions depending on your training experience.
And now you can do lower tummy exercises:
Captain’s chair crunch 3x 8 – 15
Bicycle maneuver 3x 10 – 20
Traditional crunch 3x 10 – 30
2
Leg press 2x 10 – 15
Bench press 2x 10 – 15
Repetitions depending on your training experience.
And now you can do lower tummy exercises:
AB roller/Wheel 3x 8 – 15
Extended arm crunch 3x 10 – 20
Reverse crunch 3x 10 – 30
Keep in mind that these are only workout suggestions. They aren’t something rigid you must stick to. Yes, you can try them out but also feel free to adapt your workout to your needs.
Can I choose other exercises?
Yes, you can choose other exercises so long as they satisfy your needs. Each of us have some individual characteristics and we need to consider them while choosing exercises. In addition, the best exercises among studies vary. For this reason, we cannot be 100 % sure which exercises to use with the most frequency in our workouts. There could be many reasons why results among studies differ. However, this isn’t the reason to avoid exercising. Firstly, try to implement these exercises in your workout routine. After a while, you can compare what works for you.
Take home message
As you can see from the article, when it comes to exercising, there is no one-size fits all routine. For this reason, I suggest you concentrate on the largest muscle workouts at first and only thereafter to think about focusing on a particular area, such as lower tummy, bicep outer head, etc. Yes, there is some potential to target lower tummy area, however, it can be difficult and you will need to use up a lot of energy and may not have good results.
What do you think about the lower tummy workout?
Rference
- Wend-Uwe Boeckh-Behrens, Wolfgang Buskies: Fitness-Krafttraining. Die besten Übungen und Methoden für Sport und Gesundheit, Rororo.
- Abs! Abs! Abs! https://www.acefitness.org/acefit/expert-insight-article/47/5003/abs-abs-abs/
- American Council on Exercise (ACE)-sponsored Study Reveals Best and Worst Abdominal Exercises. https://www.acefitness.org/about-ace/press-room/246/american-council-on-exercise-ace-sponsored-study-reveals-best-and-worst-abdominal-exercises
- ABC (Ask Bret Contreras) – Is it Possible to Isolate the Upper or Lower Abs? https://bretcontreras.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/abc-ask-bret-contreras-is-it-possible-to-isolate-the-upper-o-lower-abs/
- Inside the Muscles: Best Ab Exercises. https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-ab-exercises
- Muscle activity in upper and lower rectus abdominus during abdominal exercises. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8976314
- The effects of different sit- and curl-up positions on activation of abdominal and hip flexor musculature. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/h08-061
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