Lesson 1: How Your Abs Really Work

Understand Your Abs & Speed Up
Your Fat Burning

To help you get the most from this course I’m going to explain a little about the muscles that make up your abs.

It’ll help you put together a clear system for improving each specific muscle through targeted exercises, so that you quickly melt away fat and tone up your body.

So What Makes Up Your Abs?

The External Obliques:

This is the muscle that covers the sides of your abs - the outermost muscle. It should be flat. It is broad and irregularly quadrilateral in its formation. The external obliques, run from the lower eight ribs, down and forward, running down from your sides to the middle of your abs.

Internal Oblique:

This muscle is a triangle shaped muscle. It is smaller as well as a good deal thinner than the external oblique. The external oblique muscle overlays this muscle. This muscle runs diagonally in an upward movement from each of your sides up toward the center of your abdominal region.

Transverses Abdominis:

This is a flat and triangle shaped muscle. The fibres of the muscle run horizontally. It is positioned between the internal oblique and the transversalis fascia which is underlying. This muscle is the deepest of layers of muscle. It moves right across your abdomen and is a key player in the love handle improvement!

Rectus Abdominis Muscles:

These are very long and flat muscles. They are crossed by three tendinous intersections. These intersections are called linae transversae. The muscle is actually inside of a thick sheath of muscle fibers that come from the three muscles located in the lateral abdominal wall. It is on your transverses abdominis. It runs the center of your abdomen from top to bottom.

Pyramidalis Muscle:

This is a small and triangle shaped muscle in the abdomen. It is actually located at the lower abdomen positioned in front of the rectums abdominis muscle. It starts at your pubic bone and is inserted into the linea alba and runs about half way up to the belly button area.

What Do They Do?

The muscles in your abdominal region have several jobs to accomplish - basically to help you move and support your torso.

All of these muscles have some connection to your pelvis and to your ribcage. When they are used, they compress everything within the abdominal region, including all of your organs there.

To feel these muscles, stand with your back straight, and suck in and hold your stomach - or try breathing out hard and feel your abs tensing to push out the air.

The muscles that tighten all work together in this region of your body.All these muscles combined make up your core, and must be strengthen to decrease injury risk and give you great looking abs.

How Your Spine Fits Into It All…

The rectums abdominis as well as the internal and external oblique muscles help you to move your spinal column. So you can boost and tone your body’s muscles by flexing these muscles, pulling your spine closer to your pelvis over and over again.

The only way to build these muscles is to flex them over and over again with resistance. Resistance can be anything from weight to gravity itself (which is usually the case in flexing your spinal muscles by laying flat on your back through sit-ups.)

Your muscles do much more in this region as well. For example, the oblique will flex your spine when you bend sideways. They also move your spine in a twisting motion. Stand up again and flex all of your muscles in this way. You can feel exactly where the tension is and therefore you know where the work on these muscles needs to happen.

Depending on your goals in a workout, you may want to pay specific attention to specific muscle groups. For example, the bodybuilder is not looking to spend a lot of their time on lateral flexing of the muscles as this increases how wide their waist is.

Instead of bending sideways while working out, then, they concentrate more so on the twists and bent over movements, to slim the waist line to give them the ‘V’ shape.

When working to improve those abs, you must pay close attention to the types of movements you make.

As you’ll discover, it is essential to flex and exercise in a specific ways to gain improvement in your spinal muscles.

Your Hips

One common problem that people that are building muscle mass in the abdominal region tend to face is the fact that their hips do more of the work then the spinal flexion (spinal muscles we’ve mentioned.)

Your hip flexors (the group of muscles that work for movement in your hips specifically) tend to do much of the work for you. These muscles run into your thighs and along your spine as well as surround your hips.

Why You Could Be Cheating When You Do A Sit-Up

When you do a sit up, many of your hip muscles will do the work instead of your abdominal muscles, even though you believe you are working at improving your abdominal muscles.

While it can be a good thing to improve your muscles in the hip region, this will not help you to improve your overall ab toning.

Instead, you need to make sure that you are doing the right movements, over the right period of time and in the right way to avoid your hips from taking over the workout.

One solution that can help you from the start to concentrate on your abdominal muscle groups rather than the hips is this. Do more crunches and reverse crunches with the knees bent. You should have your feet up and your heels resting on the bench. When you put your body in this particular situation, your hip muscles will naturally relax.

While it will feel more difficult to move in this position, that’s because you are solely using your abdominal muscles to create the movement for you.

By understanding the make up of the muscles in your abs, you can put together a training and workout program that is right for you.

In the next lessons, we will work on some exercises that you can do to improve your core muscles, start toning up your love handles and get burning some fat!

Remember this will be the most difficult time in increasing your body’s fitness. Once you get started and get over that initial ‘hump’, these exercises will get easier and easier.

Next up - Lesson 2 - Why You Must Burn Off That Belly Fat & Burn Those Love Handles - Fast!

Yours For A Healthier, Fitter Body,

Ian Jones
Author & Editor
HowToBurnFat.co.uk

P.S. Have you ever wondered why some people burn fat with great ease, while others almost kill themselves just trying to burn a few pounds?

Here's a secret system that can 'flick the switch' in your body and rapidly annihilate stubborn body fat (all revealed when you turn to chapter 7): Click here to download now...

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