I have the great honor to interview JT a personal trainer from the newly established Fitness Bravo Personal Training Studio in Bugis. He has shared many fitness and slimming tips with me and I thought it would be beneficial to share these tips to you ladies who would like to achieve great body and health!
Many girls I know of tend to be conscious about their excess fats. Most of them want to achieve slimmer thighs and arms and also a flatter tummy. They started lifting weights, doing sit-ups, crunches and planks alone just so that they can achieve a flatter tummy. That’s what we called “spot training”.
Hear what the expert has to say about slimming the arms, thighs and tummy:
Q: Are spot-training effective?
A: Things like doing crunches to see abs or to slim the abdominal area is a common misunderstanding. This is called “spot training” and it does not work.
Doing thousands of crunches and abdominal exercises a day will not eliminate the fats around your waist; especially if you do these exercises with additional weights and resistance on machines or with free weights.
In fact, it will only make your waist thicker.
Despite so, you are going to hear people saying, “But my abs feel slimmer after I started doing crunches and the abs workout I saw on the Internet!”
The key word there is STARTED. These abdominal workouts only make your core stronger and thicker. The reason why most people feel like “it’s working” is actually due to the fact that they started exercising in general. Hence, the exercise helped them to burn calories and lose overall body fat percentage.
Q: What are some of the misconceptions ladies have about exercising?
A:
Myth 1: Heavy lifting builds big muscles on ladies.
Generally, ladies do not have enough natural testosterone to maintain bulky muscles. As such, there’s nothing to worry about!
Myth 2: Some sort of cardio or aerobic exercise is the best to “burn” fat.
The only effect that you will achieve with long hours of jogging or marathons is a “skinny fat” situation.Yes – you’ll lose weight but your body will still feel soft or “fluffy”.
Q: If these doesn’t work, what should we do to slim tummy, arms and thighs?
A:
- Just get started on ANY exercise
You have to just start doing ANY exercise to lose overall body fat percentage. Usually, playing a sport that you like would help to keep you motivated to exercise regularly. This is assuming that you are currently not doing any sort of physical activity or sport on a regular basis.
- Increase intensity of workouts
For example, if you normally do 30-minute jogs, try doing power running or also known as intervals. Power running involves alternating between sprinting and jogging. Beginners can try sprinting for about 10-15 seconds followed by a jog for about 30-45 seconds before sprinting again. Try to hit 3-5 sets, or as many as you can. Chances are if you can do up till 10 sprints, you can try something more challenging like longer sprints and lesser jogs or even sprinting uphill.
If you are already following a particular workout try reducing your rest periods between sets to increase the intensity. Reducing your rest intervals to 30 seconds or less can dramatically increase the intensity of your regular workouts.
- Explore workouts that requires full body
Full body Exercises like squats, planks, lunges or functional movements helps .Ladies who are looking for something with more difficulty can try plyometric exercises or exercises that require explosive strength.Examples of plyometric exercises include box jumps or triple standing broad jumps.These exercises are more technical and are best done with an experienced trainer.
I hope you learn something new today! I guess I am gonna stop doing spot training alone and I’m so gonna try out power running the next time I visit a gym! In the next fitness and slimming post, I am going to talk a little about dieting. Remember slimming down in a healthy way is always more beneficial in the long run!