The Spot Reduction Myth
January 16th, 2007Spot reduction or in other words, trying to eliminate fat in a particular area of the body is probably the biggest exercise myth of them all. Spot reduction is impossible so doing sit ups, crunches, leg raises or any other abdominal exercise with the intention of losing weight in that spot on your body is a waste of time. By training a certain area of the body with resistance all you are doing is sculpting or promoting grow in that part of the body, you can’t train your abdominals, legs, arms or any other area of the body and expect to lose weight in that spot, it just doesn’t work that way.
Weight training is the only way you can shape your body whether you are using free weights, exercise machines or your own bodyweight however there is no such thing as effective spot reduction training. The greatest benefit of weight training allows you to alter your own physical appearance. If you want more muscular arms you can achieve this by doing a number of different exercises for the biceps, triceps and forearms. Perhaps you have narrow shoulders, by exercising your deltoids you can modify your upper body shape and appear to look broader through the shoulders. Excess fat tends to destroy the pleasing and aesthetic lines of the human body but a lean muscular frame kept in tone with regular weight training workouts accentuates a healthy physical image. Although the commonly held belief about spot reduction training is just an old myth that never seems to go away.
Fat is not your enemy, it is an important and necessary part of your body. Fat keeps you warm and is needed as a secondary energy source to the food you eat. Of course some people are carrying too much fat on their bodies which can become a problem for them physically and emotionally. However, to get rid of the unwanted bodyfat it is necessary to take in fewer calories than you burn. Where your body first starts to lose weight is in the places where your body last accumulated the fat. This is why when people first detect they are losing weight they may notice their face and neck looks leaner or their hands don’t feel as puffy as before. If you are overweight and look back to when you were not and can remember the first place you started to gain weight, perhaps on the hips for a woman or on the lower back and gut on a man, these are the last places you will lose your fat. There is nothing you can do about this including spot reduction since spot reduction is only for dreamers of the impossible because this is genetic. We all have a different genetic make up and this is why we all lose weight from different places on our body at different stages.
So if you have been rigorously training particular areas of your body in an attempt to reduce the fat in those spots, just remember that spot reduction is one of bodybuilding oldest myths. With the correct program of weight training and consistency you can sculpt your muscles by training certain areas of the body. However, it is only through your diet that you will be able to lose body fat and that body fat will first disappear from a predetermined genetic location and unfortunately none of us can do anything about that. Although the idea of spot reduation sounds great it just can’t happen.
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