Beer Belly Exercises
If the title from today’s post is throwing you off a little- it should. Who in their right mind would want to do exercises for their beer bellies?
To reduce confusion I should have re-worded the title “exercises to reduce your beer belly, beer gut or love handles” but contrary to popular belief, it is actually impossible to spot reduce or burn fat from a targeted area on your body, hence more confusion.
I thought I was saving you from scratching your head by calling the blog post what I did but now that I read it over, it does sound a little perplexing. In any event my aim was not to confuse you but to stir the pot and encourage you to listen to something very important I have to tell you.
This “something” will save you the hundreds of dollars spent on late night infomercials selling contraptions that promise to blast beer belly fat away and carve out mouth-dropping six-pack abs where the keg once lay.
Beer Belly’s cannot be Spot Reduced
The concept of spot reduction is a widely misunderstood field and one that deserves more focus. When you exercise, whether it is in the form of running, weight training, body weight training or high intensity interval training- you cannot target a specific area like your beer belly and expect that you are going to get 6-pack abs from them.
Unfortunately, the body does not burn fat that way. If you have fat on your beer belly you cannot hammer out 1000 crunches and hope for razor sharp abs. When you exercise, fat loss happens from all over the body. You cannot pick where you want it to come off first.
Sad right? Unless you sign up for liposuction and the Doctor sticks the blow-torchy fat melting thing directly into your “problem area” and sucks the fat out, you are stuck burning fat from your entire body one small inch at a time.
Beer Belly Fat Distribution is Genetically Influenced
To make matters worse, most of the fat burning that happens is genetically influenced. Everyone has witnessed this first hand; you workout like crazy expecting to lose weight from your gut and you end up losing weight from your back fat instead. Then you put in a few more hours in the gym and it’s your love handles that disappear. And finally you’re ready to give up because it seems impossible to shed the remaining L-B’s from the beer belly.
This process also happens in reverse. Subcutaneous fat tends to be genetically influenced in its distribution. When one doesn’t exercise and eats in excess, one’s body will pack the fat on in specific areas first.
Beer Belly Fat (Visceral Fat) is Hard to Lose
More bad news… The Anatomy of a Beer Belly taught us that our beer bellies are comprised mostly of visceral fat. Visceral fat is harder to burn than subcutaneous fat. Studies support that in can be done but the intensity needs to be there. A simple walk in the park won’t cut it. You need to hit it hard when it comes to exercising and working out. You need to earn your beer.
Exercises to Reduce Your Beer Belly
Enough sad news today, time to shift gears and figure out what exercises are best to reduce beer belly fat.
Now that the idea of spot reduction has been banished from our thoughts here are a few principles guaranteed to blowtorch body fat and thus reduce the beer gut as well.
1. Compound Movements – Are multi-joint movements that work several muscles or even several muscle groups at one time. Instead of a bicep curl, think about a push-up, an exercise that engages the back, abs, shoulders, arms and chest.
Compound movements activate large muscle groups and involve larger ranges of motion, both of which create a greater caloric demand and produce better results. Moreover, you can activate many muscle groups in one exercise instead of having to work each one individually, giving you more results in less time.
When performing exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups, and push-presses you demand more work from your body, which in turn stimulates the production of two very important hormones for fat loss and muscle gain- testosterone and growth hormone.
2. High Intensity Interval Training – Metabolic training that Shocks and Awes your body can be achieved through all kinds of workouts. Interval workouts, also known as High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), combined with intense strength- resistance training is the most effective way to shed pounds from your body and get into shape fast.
Low-intensity cardio, such as aerobics or long distance running, work your body at 50-70% of your maximum effort for long periods of time. This type of exercise trains your body to become more energy efficient, requiring less fuel (fat) to perform the same amount of work. If you are looking to get in shape, this is the opposite of what you want. Ideally you want to burn through the maximum amount of fuel (fat) during your workout.
Think of long periods of low-intensity training as turning your body into an energy efficient Toyota Prius; a car that is able to undergo lots of work with little fuel burnt. Instead, what you want is to be a Formula-1 racecar; a car that pummels through the same amount of fuel in a fraction of the time. Formula-1 racing is your HIIT.
An interval training session involves a light warm up session followed by intense shock and awe bouts of increased exertion interchanged with a recovery period. By going hard and fast for short bursts and then allowing the body brief recovery periods you’re demanding a ton of work in a short amount of time. An example is 8-15 second sprints followed by a 45-60 second rest period. The added bonus to this sort of training is that workouts fly by, as you are busy catching your breath and watching the clock.
3. Metabolic Circuits and Supersets – Another awesome tool aimed at getting more results in less time is the “super-set”. A superset refers to pairing two or more exercises back-to- back with little to no rest in between. The idea is that you work multiple muscle groups in a shorter period of time and spend less time resting between sets, increasing your efficiency.
The trick to getting even more out of your supersets and getting more done in the shortest amount of time is using non-competing muscle groups. A non-competing muscle group is a group of muscles used by the body for different movements. Meaning if you were doing a pushing movement as the first exercise in the superset, you can immediately follow that up with a pulling exercise. This allows you to push hard and tax one muscle group and still have energy to pull hard with another. This also keeps your heart rate elevated because you are moving between pushing and pulling or lower and upper body exercises, all in succession.
Tri-sets are the same concept as a superset, but with 3 exercises done in sequence instead of two. You can even take it as far as 4 or 5 exercises back to back as your fitness and stamina increase, each pushing your cardio further and shredding off more fat.
The Beer Belly Exercise Wrap Up
Now that you know spot reduction is as much of a myth as thinking 12 oz beer can curls can give you sleeve-busting biceps it is time to implement these concepts into your routine. Your beer gut and the rest of the fat on your body won’t stand a chance.
Remember, losing the gut is possible but takes a little hard work, determination and total body resistance training like the plan outlined in the 3BG Beer Belly Fat Loss System.
Yours in health,
Sean
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