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Every female on the planet wants to have a fat free body, they want to feel tight, toned and sexy.  Many women fall into the trap of overtraining on cardio and forget the most important type of training for fat loss and that is strength or weight training.  So why do ladies avoid weights?  Generally the comments you hear are:  “Weights are for men”, “I don’t want to look like a man” or “I don’t want to get big and bulky”.  Well Ladies let me tell you that this simply won’t happen unless you start taking illegal supplements – we simply do not have enough testosterone in our bodies to build muscle like men do.

So why should you train with weights?  The most important reason is that weight training builds and maintains muscle and this is the key element to revving up your metabolism, even when you are at rest, with an increased lean muscle mass your metabolism will burn more energy.  The more muscle you have the greater your capacity to store carbohydrates which means you can eat more carbs without them being converted into fat.

Women who regular train with weights will find that their body becomes tighter and their shape will be transformed into a strong athletic figure without saddle bags or bingo wings – isn’t this what every woman wants?

As you get older the metabolism naturally slows down – your resting metabolic rate will drop approx 2% every decade after the age of 20 due to a loss of muscle mass.  By weight training and building muscle regularly and consistently you will ensure that your muscle density is maintained and thus ensure your metabolic rate continues to stay fired up.

The process of lifting weights puts stress on the muscles and the body responds by building more muscle cells to compensate for the new loads being placed upon them and this cell generation requires energy – hence your tight toned body has the capacity to burn more calories.

The other essential reason why women should do weights is that it can prevent the onset of osteoporosis or brittle bones by ensuring the bones stay strong.  During exercise when the muscles are being stressed the ligaments that attach the muscle to bones pull on the bone which stimulates cell growth and calcium deposits as the body ensures it is capable of taking the stress loaded.

Other benefits of weight training include:-

• Increased strength and everyday functional capability
• Reduction in blood pressure
• Less risk of developing Type II diabetes
• Stronger immune system
• Healthier joints
• Increased balance and performance
• Calcium Retention
• ‘Delayed Aging Process

It must be understood that achieving a flat stomach or six-pack does not occur as a result of any form of abdominal exercise in isolation.   It is also important to point out that you cannot spot reduce one particular area of the body; you have to focus on overall body fat loss by following an appropriate eating plan, in combination with weight training and cardiovascular exercise. You don’t burn petrol by opening and closing the bonnet of the car. You burn it by driving it. The same applies with your stomach. Move your body and you will burn the fuel and fat off your stomach. It may surprise you to learn that we all have a six pack, some people also have a layer of fat over the top of theirs!

The only way to get a flat stomach is to firstly lower your overall body fat (through proper nutrition and regular weight training and cardiovascular exercise). The body tends to store fat easiest around the mid section due to the need to protect the vital internal organs.  It is due to this natural survival mechanism that excess fat is stored here first and can be the last area the body draws on for energy.  The body will take energy stored in the fat of the arms and legs before taking it from the mid section as its priority is to protect the precious organs.  This is why for some individuals reducing fat around their mid section can be tough.

Secondly, the stabilising muscles around the spine need to be activated to achieve a neutral lumbar spine, rather than a lordotic spine, which make the stomach protrude.One of the most widely known abdominal exercises is the “crunch”.

The Rectus Abdominus (which is the muscle targeted when performing a crunch) does not play a direct role in core stability as this muscle does not attach to the spine. The Rectus Abdominus is generally stronger than the stabilising muscles and its main role is to flex the spine, the movement performed when doing crunches.

People may respond by saying that they don’t perform crunches to stabilise their spine.  Instead they perform them to get a flat stomach.  I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but this is never going to work.

There is only one way to make an abdominal crunch effectively switch ‘on’ the stabilising muscles and that is to perform them very slowly, with the correct breathing pattern.  You stabilise first and then exhale on the contraction or crunch part of the exercise.

That way, the Rectus Abdominus is forced to co-contract with the Obliques, Transverse Abdominus and Multifidus, as they consist of predominantly Slow Twitch muscle fibres, which like to be recruited slowly.

Crunches performed at faster speeds may be useful to the body builder who wishes to thicken the Rectus Abdominus to achieve the “Six Pack” look.  However, this will only be effective once the Body Fat has been lost.

If clients, who are not conscious about losing Body Fat, perform crunches they may appear to be getting fatter, as the abdominal wall thickens, without a corresponding loss of adipose tissue.

Now that we’ve established people should generally focus on exercises that will stabilise the core, there are so many effective exercises to choose from:

• Supine Floor Holds
• Supine floor Crunches
• Prone Ball Holds
• Supine Ball Holds
• Supine Ball Crunches
• Supine Leg Lowers

These are all useful exercises and each of them have various progressions to them.