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MYTH:
Abdominal muscles can be trained every day.
For millions of people from around the world, the aspiration for developing a strong and attention-grabbing waistline is a life-long struggle that seldom results in the desired outcome. It is therefor not surprising for many individuals, including top experts in the fitness field, to become
seduced by the flawed and misguided notion of training the abdominal muscles every single day.
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FACT:
When trained with strict form and adequate intensity, the muscles that make up your abdominal region need ample recovery time between workouts, just like any other muscle in your body. Attacking your abs relentlessly every day would interfere with that recuperation process, barring them from
peak development.
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Rectus abdominus, the anatomically correct name for what we call our “abs”, is a collection of dynamic muscle fibers that work in conjunction with your Internal and External Obliques, allowing your torso to bend, twist and turn in practically unlimited angles and directions!
Kristia Knowles
Yet, regardless of how impressive that “six-pack” may look on a strong and well-trained midsection, the exercise strategies and mentalities utilized for bringing out the abdominal's peak condition should not differ much from those used to develop other muscle groups! At the very least, the abs should not be exercised every single day!
So, exactly what are the reasons we should not adopt the discipline of training abs around the clock? Precisely the same reasons why we would abstain from exercising our shoulders, hamstrings, biceps or any other body parts on consecutive days: Muscle tissue needs time to regenerate and rebuild itself
after being pushed beyond normal working capacity. Abdominal muscle is structured similarly to every other skeletal muscle in the human body. Being as such, the muscle fibers in the abdomen are subject to the same physiological processes and limitations. Unfortunately, a large host of individuals are under the wrongful impression that our abs are somehow exempt from the rules governing our muscular system.
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“It's a chronic, overkill syndrome with these poor, misinformed gym members”, says John Ridley, a seasoned personal trainer at a busy New York City fitness center. “They show up here like clockwork, morning and evening, sitting there on the abdominal board repeatedly hammering out countless sets of
crunches and sit-ups until they turn blue in the face! To make matters worse, their actions are usually encouraged by under-educated professionals who tell them to do this sort of crazy thing . . . that they should blast their abs with hundreds of repetitions every single day! It makes it that much harder for me to set the record straight!”
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The predicaments that John faces are far from uncommon, as they occur at practically every gym and club across the country. But the truth of the matter is quite simple, and this myth-busting report is designed to shed light on the facts.
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Before we can delve into those facts, a certain amount of basic muscle anatomy needs to be presented for better clarity.
There are three distinct types of muscle in the human body: smooth muscle,
cardiac muscle and
skeletal muscle.
The function of skeletal muscles is to allow you to move the bones (skeleton) of the human body in the direction desired. Hence, they are considered “voluntary” because you have full control over their movement, such as the muscles that
move your arms, legs, neck and torso.
(Smooth and cardiac muscles are “involuntary” in nature, responsible for your digestion, heartbeat and other automatically controlled tasks regulated by the
central nervous system
without your consent). All skeletal muscles, on the microscopic level, share the same design and function characteristics, which means that the muscles of your abdominal region act and behave just like any other skeletal muscle in the human body.
If we were to examine a cross-cut view of skeletal muscle up close, we would notice that muscle tissue is a
vast “bundle” of progressively smaller divisions of elongated, fiber-like cells that can contract and expand in relation to the demands placed upon them, much like that of a rubber band. Whenever we exercise, particularly strength training with
weights, these clusters of resilient fibers are called into greater use, working much harder than when performing common, every day activities such as casual walking or simply waving a hand. As skeletal muscles are called upon to work under significantly heavier
work-loads than what they are accustomed to, the thread-like muscle fibers that contract against the heavy resistance are forced to adapt by growing larger, denser and stronger. This adaptation response is known as
“muscle hypertrophy”,
and it occurs so that the next time the muscle encounters similar resistance, it will perform its duties with less strain and greater efficiency. Observing the effects of this process from an outward, large-scale view, the muscles involved would appear harder,
more toned and in certain cases slightly enlarged. The degree of this adaptation depends primarily on genetics, age, gender and the overall health of the individual performing the exercise.
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The important point being made here is that muscular hypertrophy is a necessary process in order to shape and sculpt those abs.
If the abdominal muscles are not stressed enough, or trained with sufficient resistance, they would not show any improvement from the training program, no matter how many sets, repetitions or workout sessions are performed!
In other words, whether an individual does a hundred crunches, a thousand crunches or even a million crunches in one sitting, they would notice very little if any changes at all in their muscular development!
At this point you may be shaking your head in disbelief and passing off these assertions as a bit
absurd (pun intended). But one must keep in mind that the average human being is awake for 16 hours a day, and their abdominal muscles
are constantly being utilized to support and balance their movements throughout that entire waking state. Meaning, the “core” of your body is a very active area, thereby it is quite accustomed to chronic movement. So by going to the gym and performing a king's ransom in sit-ups, crunches and
leg raises with very little resistance, your abs are just doing more of the same thing! Would you ever expect to significantly develop your deltoid (shoulder) muscles by lifting and aiming the TV remote a few hundred times a day? It wouldn't be any more realistic to believe that your abdominal muscles could
somehow benefit from a countless onslaught of high-repetition movements, either. A more feasible strategy would be to employ a relatively heavy and difficult resistance when training the midsection, so that you could perform no more than 12 to 15 repetitions . . . perhaps 20 at best, during any given set.
You could, for example, use a resistance / medicine ball, dumbbell, tension band or cable machine to create such resistance in the exercise being executed. The key is to make your abdominal muscles scream out in burning pain by inducing physical exertion that is far more challenging than what they're used to!
That means you should reach a complete point of muscular fatigue very quickly, within a minute or less. The bottom line is that if you can perform a movement hundreds of times non-stop, you simply aren't training intensely enough to bring about change.
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Perhaps a light bulb is suddenly turning on inside your head! ”Great!” you say to yourself, “so why can't I train like that every day?” And the
answer to that question is: Recuperation! Muscle hypertrophy is a time-dependent process that requires a certain amount of rest and sleep in between exercising similar muscle groups. The prevailing problem that seems to get in the way of progress at the gym is the sad reality that many people underestimate the
necessity of muscle recovery. In fact, a lot of individuals simply pretend that they don't need any rest at all in between workouts! But here's a stone-cold fact that should get everyone's attention:
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Muscles become stronger and more developed during sleep, not while exercising!
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You could do every possible exercise in the world, a thousand times over, but your body won't start the recovery and rebuilding process until you stop what you're doing and
give it a good break! The hardness or “pump” that you feel in your muscles while you're strength training is not muscular growth or enhancement. It's extra blood being circulated into the muscle tissue in order to support the increased demands of the exercise being performed. So many people focus
on that pump, but the tightness will eventually subside after the workout, and what happens in the next 24 to 48 hours - whether or not you provide the exerted muscles with the adequate time to fully recover - will be the deciding factor in your body's physical development (although it should be noted that this
is a conservative estimate, as it may take as much as 72 hours for a muscle to completely recover from high-intensity strength training!).
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But what really happens when someone insists on training their abs constantly, without allotting for recuperation time? To better explain the counterproductive effects of what is simply referred to as “overtraining”, we must first understand what is happening on the microscopic level:
If we were to continue zooming in much closer, and examine the structure of a single muscle fiber, we would notice that the fiber itself is made up in turn of hundreds of very tiny, wire-like structures called “myofibrils”, comparing similarly to the way a group of wiry strands of thread make up a complete rope. The
myofibril, therefor, is the single contractile unit (building block) of a muscle cell or fiber.
When we are engaged in moving a weight that's heavier than what we're regularly accustomed to, the stress of the muscular contraction against the resistance is transferred all the way down to the individual myofibrils of the working muscle fibers. If the muscular contraction (shortening of the fibers) is intense enough, the physical stress will cause some of the myofibrils to rupture, tear or even become completely severed!
Not to be alarmed, because this localized damage is taking place on a microscopic level, and will not usually result in the injury of an entire group of muscle fibers (Extensive stiffness or soreness following a workout may be one of the side effects from this process). However, this small-scale damage is precisely what leads to muscle hypertrophy, in which case the affected myofibrils will repair themselves and adapt by ultimately
growing larger, denser and stronger!
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Over time, a consistent cycle of muscular stress and adaptation should accrue considerable hypertrophy, which may be witnessed in the tone and shape of an entire muscle or group of muscles!
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Could you imagine, then, what takes place when someone undertakes the misguided task of training and then immediately retraining the abdominal region while the muscle tissue is still in a
state of fatigue and stress, and desperately in need of regeneration? The only goal this individual would accomplish at that point is exponentially increasing the damage to the affected tissue, slowing the recovery process and inhibiting the adaptation response! They also drastically increase their risk of having the muscle tissue incure
serious, large-scale injury! If the damage to the myofibrils extends outward to the macro level, tearing entire stands of muscle fibers, then the original intention of the exercise would be utterly lost.
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Don't waste your time with easy, high-repetition exercises. Instead, train your abs with resistance that will challenge you and quickly fatigue your muscles. Remember that muscle
hypertrophy is a product of high intensity, not high volume.
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Listen to your body, and give it the proper rest in between training your abdominal muscles. Recognize that chronic overtraining of any muscle group will hinder your progress in physical
development. Your abs are no different than any other skeletal muscle group, and they require quality resting time for recovery and adaptation.
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