A Quick Abs Hot Tip From This Model Trainer

Sadly, it has nothing to do with actual abdominal exercises

Abs. Six-pack abs. Four-pack abs. Any abs? A super flat belly….No matter your workout, a svelte belly can often be elusive. Guest writer and fitness trainer Heather Marr confirmed to me the bad news - ab work doesn’t get you abs. I have heard that a flat belly is made in the kitchen, not in the gym. No amount of yoga will get me there, but its all about diet and muscle mass.

Heather is known for her sustainable, healthy and transformative fitness methods. Heather lives in New York and works with models and people from all walks of life. Enjoy her quick tips below.

-Robin

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Many of us want abs and a flat stomach and train for them, but few of us ever get them. I work out of many gyms and see the same mistakes over and over. Members will spend half of their allotted time in the gym doing various ab isolation moves. Spoiler alert: this is never going to work.

More often than not, their body fat is just too high to show any definition whatsoever in that area. They can crunch their lives away, but they'll never get the abs they're striving for. The only way to build abs is eat intelligently and then after you do that, train intelligently. So, how exactly do you do that?

1. Maximize your time and focus on muscle mass and body fat reduction exercises

For most people, it's not realistic to spend hours in the gym every day. Maximizing your time in the gym and training intelligently is crucial to your success. I recommend doing do heavy exercises like squats, bent-over rows, deadlifts, and shoulder presses. These are all effective exercises to add and maintain muscle mass, boost metabolism, and help lower body fat, all of which is necessary to reveal those abs and lean belly.

These exercises also help to strengthen the core. These types of exercises should be the bread and butter in your training programs, especially if you can only get to the gym a couple days a week. If you only have one hour to train legs, for example, fill that hour with heavy leg work like squats, lunges, and deadlifts, don’t fill it with 30 minutes of leg work and 30 minutes of abs and core.

2. Creating a calorie deficit is crucial and there is no way around it.

You need to create a calorie deficit to lower body fat and show definition in your abs. When it comes to nutrition, a common mistake I see is lack of portion control and also a lack of proper food preparation.