The best exercise to flatten your tummy is surprisingly not an exercise that targets the stomach at all. While you might well think that the mighty sit up for example would be the best exercise to flatten tummy fat and muscles, this actually isn’t the case. Nor is it the crunch, the leg raise, or anything else ab related. The reason for this is that if your stomach isn’t fat it’s not a problem with your abs, but rather with the amount of fat that is covering them. As it’s impossible to target fat loss this means that any number of sit ups or crunches will be futile in the fight to get your stomach looking flat as they’ll just make your stomach stronger underneath the flab – which though good for core stability and health is actually fairly useless for your appearance.

So baring this in mind what is the best exercise to flatten tummy’s fat? The answer is CV – anything that involves burning fat. This could be running, cycling, boxing, dancing, shadow boxing, playing sports such as football, swimming or rowing. As you do this the body will search for more energy once it’s used up the energy in your muscles and in your blood and so will begin to burn carbs and body fat to use as fuel (this is the reason we store them in the first place and the reason swimmers crossing the channel or marathon runners put on excess fat).

If you want to use CV (cardiovascular exercise) to strip the fat from your stomach then you should use the exercises two to three times a week for about thirty minutes to begin with – but you can increase this as you strengthen your heart and improve your VO2 max until you start getting the results you want. The speed at which you burn fat will vary between individual metabolisms (your metabolism refers to the body’s speed at which it burns fat and carbs for energy) and the order in which your body burns fat will also vary depending on genetics. While some of us are lucky enough that we burn fat on our stomachs first, others might find they lose it in their bums etc long before they lose it on their stomachs.

Following this, once you have burned away the excess fat, to get a truly flat stomach now is when you want to add the toning exercises. The best exercise to flatten your tummy once you’ve stripped away fat is probably either the sit up or the crunch – or a combination of both. This in itself won’t strip fat but will flatten the remainder and give you that toned look.

Mack LeMouse

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