Step 1: THE NEW RULES of
SCULPTING
LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES, most of us would begin a regimen of abdominal crunches to create an enviable core. It seems like the obvious and logical strategy. After all, if you want to improve upon something, you should do more of that thing. To improve your tennis serve, you practice serving; to improve your golf swing, you practice golfing; and so on. So the fastest road to a great-looking core is to dedicate more time to working your abs. A typical visit to the gym might include 30 minutes on the elliptical, 10 minutes of crunches, and a protein shake in the car. Sound like a familiar workout? If you’ve been following a program similar to this for months (maybe years?) and seen little to no change in your body, you’re not alone. We’ve been programmed to think that crunches are the fastest path to a flat belly.
Our cultural obsession with crunches has deep roots, which I will attempt to extract throughout the course of this book. It’s difficult to turn away from traditional, time-honored practices, mainly because they feel comfortable. Maybe you remember racing through a minute of crunches in PE to prove your fitness level. You’ve probably been to group fitness classes, all of which seemed to be some version of cardio exercise that ends with a series of crunches. Essentially, we have been trained to follow a workout template that consists of low-intensity cardio topped off with five variations of a traditional crunch. Despite all my education in exercise science, it took me years to break out of this workout doctrine because it was all I had ever known. Even though I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted, the female workout code of elliptical + crunches = better body was so embedded in my psyche that I felt deviating from it would amount to fitness heresy. I was scared. Sure, I could try something new and radical, but I was skeptical that the outcome would be any different. And even though my workout strategy wasn’t working, I was really good at it.
I spent way too many years thinking that the length of my workout would be directly proportional to the results I would see. More is better! I kept adding more and more low-intensity cardio every time I wanted to drop a few pounds, more crunches if I wanted to tighten my tummy, and more diet sodas and sugar-free frozen yogurt to eat “healthier.” Once I became a personal trainer and started coaching people, I noticed that my clients’ workout history sounded eerily similar to my own. I quickly realized that we were getting it wrong—it was time to shed the traditional routine of cardio and crunches and do something radical. It was time to create a program that would deliver the results we were all looking for.
DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH CRUNCHES
It might come as a shock that the Core Envy program does not include crunches. I’ve intentionally omitted them because they don’t utilize a significant percentage of your core musculature. While it feels like you’re working hard when you’re 70 reps into a grueling round of 100 crunches, you are predominantly working a single muscle group—the rectus abdominis (rectus). In actuality, the true “core” of the body includes countless other muscles.
This brings up the issue of function versus vanity. Why wouldn’t you want to focus your gym time on developing a rockin’ rectus? Aren’t those the beach muscles that look great with a spray tan? If a well-developed rectus is what turns heads, do we really need a well-rounded core routine that works all the other muscles? The short answer is that a high-functioning core leads to a better-looking core. Focusing on only a few core muscles can lead to poor posture (which makes your tummy stick out) and injuries (which will inhibit you from being able to work out). Build a solid foundation for your core with a well-rounded core routine, and you will accomplish the dual goals of looking good while being strong and pain-free.
AB EXERCISES vs. CORE EXERCISES
The terms “abs” and “core” are not synonymous, though they are often erroneously used interchangeably. The abdominal muscles consist of only four groups of muscles—the rectus abdominis, external obliques, internal obliques, and transverse abdominis—whereas the entire core consists of all the muscles (muscle groups) depicted in the following figures. You might have strong abs, but this does not mean your entire core is strong!
AB EXERCISES |
CORE EXERCISES |
Reverse crunch |
Plank holds |
Side crunch |
Squats |
Traditional crunch |
Mountain climbers |
Bicycle crunch |
Bird dogs |
When I talk about the foundation for your core, I’m not referring just to the intricate musculature beneath your abs. Your glutes and hamstrings are also involved. These muscles are traditionally categorized as “lower-body” muscles, but they serve a dual function in helping to stabilize and move the pelvis, which makes them part of the core. In fact, any muscle that is attached to either the pelvis or the spine is technically part of the core. Add to the major muscle groups all of the smaller, deeper muscles in this area, and the count of how many muscles are in the human core easily reaches into the hundreds. If your core strengthening routine is based solely on crunches, you’re neglecting 95 percent of your core musculature.
When a large percentage of your core muscles is routinely ignored, it creates a scenario called muscular imbalance in which a muscle or group of muscles becomes tight and overactive, therefore causing a neighboring or opposing muscle to become weak and underactive. The imbalance is problematic because our muscles control our joints and bones, and when a certain muscle is doing too much work, it will start to pull the bones and joints it is attached to into uncomfortable positions. For example, when our friend the rectus abdominis becomes overactive, it pulls the rib cage and pelvis closer together. Repetitively bringing your rectus muscles into a contracted, or shortened, position results in poor posture and can ultimately place excessive pressure on the discs of the spine, causing pain and even long-term injury.
Most people have core musculature that is extremely imbalanced, primarily because we already do exercises that work on strengthening only the rectus. Such exercises are particularly problematic because we are already shortening our rectus all day while we sit in the car, sit at our desks, sit on the couch, or slouch while we walk. Simply stated, we don’t need to work our rectus because is it already overworked and overactive.
Instead of doing exercises that shorten the rectus, we need to focus on exercises that recruit the deep core muscles. Scientific studies have actually proven that crunches and similar movements that involve trunk flexion do not activate the core muscles as effectively as do other exercises. In a recent study conducted at Auburn University, researchers tested the efficiency of popular core exercises through the use of electromyography.1 By positioning electrodes on the skin over the muscles that are being tested, this technology measures the level of contraction found in those muscles. In order to establish a reference scale for the study, the standard crunch was assigned a value of 100. The exercises with values higher than 100 points showed greater muscular contraction than the standard crunch, and those under 100 had less. The results of the study clearly show why crunches are out, whereas moves such as the Pilates hundred and the isometric side bridge are in. The exercises that successfully recruit the deep abdominal muscles have two things in common: They require a high degree of stabilization, and they avoid trunk flexion. Additional movements that follow these guidelines include exercises such as the plank hold, the seated boat row, and windshield wipers. The Core Envy program uses variations of all of these movements and many more original movements I created to give you an enviable core that is also functional.
In addition to recruiting the deep core muscles, we need to recruit the big movers of the core, primarily the gluteals. You can’t have an enviable core without having glutes that are strong and functional. I’ve had many a client make the argument that her butt is already big, so it must be strong. Well, we’ve all heard the adage, but in this case it’s true: Size doesn’t matter. It’s entirely possible (and very common) to have glutes that take up a lot of real estate but aren’t actually working. If you want to find out whether or not your glutes are showing up for the job, try the test in the sidebar “Are Your Glutes Firing?” When the glutes are shut off and not firing correctly, the body will rely on other muscles to step in and do the job. Often the muscles that take over for the glutes are smaller (for example, the muscles of the low back) and less efficient. Over time, these muscles will become excessively taxed and will end up causing pain and injury.
To test the firing capability of your glutes, perform this simple exercise. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the ground 8 to 10 inches from your glutes. Lift one leg off the floor. Pressing through the opposite heel, lift your hips as high off the ground as possible. You should feel this movement primarily in the glute of the leg pressing into the floor. Complete 15 repetitions, then switch to the other leg.
If you feel the movement in your glutes, then your posterior is functioning properly. If you feel it in your hamstrings and low back, then you need to focus on glute activation and strengthening exercises. Turn to the “Booty Bonus” series to do just that.
BURN CALORIES WITH CARDIO, NOT CORE WORK
The term “burn” has been associated with exercise for a long time: Feel the burn, burn away fat, calorie burn, burning muscles . . . the list goes on and on. We all want to feel that the exercises we are doing are effective and worthwhile, and that burning sensation we get while doing a specific movement helps us feel that we are working hard, burning lots of calories, and therefore tightening the muscles that are burning. But what exactly is that burning sensation, and is it really a barometer for the effectiveness of a workout?
Contrary to popular belief, the burn that we feel in our muscles during exercise is not directly related to caloric burn or the amount of fat that is being burned. Just because you feel a burn in your abdominal muscles during a crunch, it does not mean that your body is burning fat in that area. That sensation in your muscles is actually an indication that your body is out of its quickest form of energy called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and it needs to slow down or stop doing the exercise in order to produce more. ATP is the building block of energy for all physical activity. In order for your muscles to contract and your body to move, they must have a steady supply of ATP. Because they have a very limited supply on hand at any given time, our bodies use metabolic pathways to produce more ATP on the fly. There are three metabolic pathways: adenosine triphosphate–phosphocreatine (ATP-PC), glycolysis, and aerobic ATP production. Depending on the intensity and duration of your workout, your body might utilize energy from all three pathways. What you need to know for the purposes of fat loss is that the higher you get your heart rate, the more these metabolic pathways will burn calories. It’s tempting to base the effectiveness of a workout on how much “burn” you feel in the muscles, but it’s the intensity and duration of the workout that will truly determine how many calories—and therefore how much fat—you are melting away.
Where exactly does core work fall on the spectrum of calorie burning? Unfortunately, most traditional core exercises are not scorching a lot of calories. You can do crunches all day long and see no change to the fat you store around your midsection because your heart rate isn’t high enough, which means you aren’t burning calories at a significant rate. Again, it might feel as if you’re working hard because your ab muscles are burning and you can’t do more than 20 reps, but if you were to wear a heart rate monitor during crunches, it would show that your heart rate rarely gets above 90 beats per minute. When it comes to burning fat and losing weight, your heart rate is the prime indicator of success. It’s simple math: The higher your heart rate, the more calories you burn, and the more calories you burn, the more fat you lose. One pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories, so you need to focus on exercises that will get your heart rate high enough to burn the maximum amount of calories in the shortest amount of time.
How will you know which types of workouts are maximizing your fat loss? In 2005, the Journal of Sports Sciences published a study that outlined an equation to predict the number of calories burned per hour based on your average heart rate.2 We can apply this equation to different types of sculpting and cardio routines to determine which ones deliver the best results. As the oft-used adage goes: Don’t work harder, work smarter.
Let’s take the old crunches-based core routine as a starting point for caloric burn. If we assume an average heart rate of 90 beats per minute (which is the heart rate most of my clients exhibit while doing crunches), a 40-year-old female who weighs 160 pounds will burn approximately 195 calories in an hour. You could burn that many calories in 20 minutes by doing a moderate jog. Plus, when was the last time you did crunches for an hour? Most of us can last about 1 minute, which translates into 3.25 calories burned—that’s less than the calorie content of a breath mint. This is one of the myriad reasons why you won’t see standard crunches in my Core Envy sculpting routines. Instead, I’ve focused on exercises that recruit more of the muscles in the core, therefore burning off calories faster by elevating your heart rate. Keep in mind, however, that in order to truly maximize the fat burn around your belly, these sculpting workouts need to be paired with cardio. Sculpting routines alone cannot ensure optimal caloric burn.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SPOT-REDUCING FAT
We all store fat in different areas of our bodies; women with pear-shaped bodies tend to store more in the hips and thighs, while women with apple-shaped bodies store more in the abdomen and upper arms. When you want to reduce fat in a specific area of your body, it would seem reasonable to do exercises that work the muscles in that region. So if you want less fat on your thighs, you do lunges; if you want less fat on your arms, you do biceps curls; and if you want to burn off that spare tire, you do core exercises. Seems perfectly logical, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, this approach to fat reduction is simply false. The reason we can’t microtarget fat areas is that fat is stored primarily in the form of triglycerides. These triglycerides might tend to collect more in certain areas (such as the abdomen or thighs), but that doesn’t mean the muscles of that area are using those specific triglycerides for fuel.
When we need energy to move, our body will call upon the stored energy in our fat cells and convert that energy into fuel that our muscles can use. Just because we have fat cells in our stomach doesn’t mean our body will choose those particular fat cells to convert to energy when we’re doing core exercises. In short, the fat cells in our stomach don’t “belong” to the muscles of the stomach. The body will pull energy from fat cells in many different areas of the body and will use that fuel to help power whatever activity we are doing. For this reason, the key to burning fat as quickly as possible is to choose activities that burn the highest number of calories, in turn eliminating the highest amount of fat. In the next chapter, we will look at which types of workouts are the most effective for burning fat calories, and we’ll examine why manipulating your heart rate is the key to losing belly fat.
IS ALL BELLY FAT the same?
Fat located beneath the skin—the stuff you can pinch—is called “subcutaneous” fat. This is the same type of fat found on the thighs and upper arms. Fat located near the abdominal organs is called visceral fat, and it is associated with an increased risk of type II diabetes, colorectal cancer, high levels of LDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, and a host of other ailments.3
Visceral fat is also the main culprit behind a bulging tummy. The good news is that visceral fat tends to respond quite well to high-intensity interval training and a decrease in consumption of calories, especially sugar and refined carbohydrates.
START WITH A POSTURE MAKEOVER
A few years ago I worked with a woman who was very concerned about building her abdominal muscles back up after two pregnancies. I immediately noticed how rounded her shoulders were and that her posture was making her stomach stick out enough that you might begin to wonder if she were still pregnant. She looked down at her stomach and exclaimed, “See? Ever since I had kids, I have this horrible pooch that won’t go away!” I promptly pulled her shoulders back and told her to lift her chest up 3 inches. Voilà! Her dreaded “mommy tummy” disappeared immediately. She was shocked but came to the realization that she had started slouching thanks to her daily routine of breast-feeding, carrying babies, and being chronically sleep-deprived. I started her on a program that focused on strengthening not only the abdominal muscles but also those of the upper back and midback. Her posture improved dramatically, the mommy tummy went away, and her confidence skyrocketed.
The problem of poor posture is not restricted to mothers and older women. Over the past decade, I’ve noticed a significant increase in the number of women who come to me with extremely poor posture. As poor posture becomes more and more prevalent, our collective memory of good posture fades away. The ramifications go far beyond vanity and a belly pooch. When the spine is excessively rounded forward for long periods of time, ischemic tissue (tissue that no longer has oxygen flow to it) will develop in the area and contribute to the irreversible curvature of the spine. In addition, poor posture can interfere with the brain’s ability to communicate with the muscles (by putting pressure on the spinal column), can cause joint and muscle injuries, and can even lead to painful trigger points from overused muscles.
Take a look at your profile in a mirror and compare your natural posture with the illustrations shown here. The position of your head will have a domino effect on the rest of your spine. You can experience this by pushing your chin forward 6 inches, which should cause your upper back and shoulders to round forward and your chest cavity to collapse.
Notice that if you have poor posture, it is likely that your shoulders are slumped and your hips are tucked under in a way that makes your gluteals look weak and untoned, which in turn makes your stomach look bigger. Now move your body into the opposite position, which is called a back extension. The abdominal muscles immediately become elongated and flatter, the shoulders pull back and create an opening in the chest, and the hips move into a slight anterior pelvic tilt (pushed backward), which helps the gluteals look round and toned.
When your mother harped on you to stand up straight and pull your shoulders back, she should have mentioned that good posture makes your chest, abs, and butt more attractive. Now, I’m not talking about an exaggerated position like that of a gymnast saluting the judges. You want to find the natural posture that helps you look great and allows your spinal column to rest in its optimal position.
There are four primary regions of the spine, and each one exhibits a curve called either “lordosis” or “kyphosis.” If the natural curve becomes exaggerated, it can result in postural distortions. Because of the ever increasing use of computers and cell phones and time spent sitting and slouching, the presence and severity of postural distortions are growing at an alarming rate. While this sounds serious, most postural distortions can be corrected by strengthening the muscles of the core—especially those that are chronically underutilized. You will notice that the core routines in this book focus heavily on exercises that use the muscles on the sides and back of the core. This is not an accident. We have already established that most traditional core routines focus on strengthening the already dominant rectus abdominis. In contrast, the routines in this book work on elongating the rectus abdominis while strengthening the deep abdominals and the muscles responsible for spinal rotation and stabilization. Oh, and at the same time, the routines will make your core chiseled. Not a bad combo.
The take-home lesson is that how you train your body to move during workouts will affect how your body moves during real life. If you lie on the ground and repeatedly train your shoulders to crunch down toward your hips, when you stand up, your body will naturally move into this pattern as well. Likewise, if you push your chin and head forward during movements such as crunches, push-ups, or lunges, then you are training your chin and head to push forward while you stand and walk.
Many women believe that the common progression to poor posture is collateral damage of the aging process, an unavoidable consequence of a lifetime trying to combat gravity. Although conditions such as scoliosis are largely hereditary and therefore unpreventable, they are rare (occurring in 2 to 3 percent of the US population). The vast majority of poor-posture culprits are actually quite treatable through regular exercise. In fact, regular exercise helps maintain proper alignment of the spine and also helps slow the loss of bone density. Rest assured that the exercises in this book are designed not only to give you an enviable core but to keep the muscles around your spine healthy and strong, giving you the added benefit of an ideal, sexy posture.
Not only do we need to maintain good static posture while we’re standing or sitting but we also need to keep this posture during movement. Dynamic posture, or the position of our bodies during movement, is just as important as static posture, but it’s often overlooked.
One of the quickest ways I can tell whether or not a client has good dynamic posture is to have her do a squat with her arms held straight up overhead. If she collapses forward during the squat, rounding her shoulders and letting the chest fall toward the legs, that’s a telltale indicator that the core muscles aren’t strong enough to support the spinal column. In other words, the dynamic posture of the spine is compromised.
AN ENVIABLE CORE FEELS GOOD
In addition to helping your posture, a strong core can play a critical role in keeping you pain-free, specifically in the low back. If you’ve experienced low-back pain, you’ve probably been told that improving your core strength can help alleviate your discomfort. I’ve had multiple clients come to me claiming that they’ve been working on their core strength at the behest of a doctor. With no specific instructions beyond “improve core strength,” you might leave the doctor’s office and immediately begin a program of crunches, twisting crunches, side crunches, and several other movements that involve lying on your back and bringing your torso toward your knees. After weeks or months of following this protocol, chances are high that you’re not only still suffering from low-back pain but may actually be experiencing an increase in symptoms. How can this be? What went wrong?
In order to understand why crunches can actually exacerbate low-back pain, we must first look at the basic structure and function of the spine. Our spinal column consists of the spinal cord, the spinal nerves, 33 vertebrae (bones), and 24 intervertebral discs that provide padding between each vertebra. The intervertebral discs live only between the vertebrae of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spinal regions; we have 9 additional fused vertebrae in the sacrum and coccyx that aren’t separated by discs.
The integrity of the intervertebral discs is crucial to maintaining a healthy, pain-free spine. If the position of the discs is compromised in any way, then you are in danger of experiencing a bulging, herniated, or slipped disc. Almost 90 percent of disc injuries occur in the lumbar (low-back) area of the spine, most frequently between L4 and L5 and L5 and S1.4 As you can see from the figure in “All About the Spine,” when a disc herniation occurs, the gel-like substance in the middle of the disc (nucleus pulposus) pushes its way outside the disc and starts to press against nerve roots. Pressure on a nerve root can cause debilitating pain that can run all the way down the back or side of the leg.
The two main causes of disc herniation are normal wear and tear (also called degenerative disc disease) and a traumatic event. Normal wear and tear on the spine happens every day, as we call upon the discs to cushion the spine while we bend, twist, rotate, and carry heavy objects. Over time, the discs will start to wear down and lose their ability to effectively withstand these forces. We can help maintain and improve upon the health of our spinal discs by enhancing good posture and good muscle tone; this is where core strength comes into play.
The key to building the type of core necessary to prevent low-back pain is to choose exercises that help maintain the spine in its neutral position. In its proper position, the lumbar spine should exhibit a slight lordotic curve of 4 to 7 degrees in men and 7 to 10 degrees in women. In other words, your low back should have a very subtle arch or extension. When the lumber spine is tucked under, it goes into flexion, which forces the spine into an unnatural position and puts undue stress on those crucial intervertebral discs. Abdominal crunches not only compromise the position of your spine but also force the cervical (neck) spine into an excessively flexed position, causing neck and upper-back pain. Needless to say, avoiding improper spinal positions should be a priority in any exercise routine.
With all these facts and statistics showing that most core exercises (particularly the traditional crunch-based routines) are not, in fact, going to create the enviable core we desire, why should we do core exercises at all? If doing high-intensity cardio burns fat more effectively than crunches, why wouldn’t you just do cardio all day long and ditch the brutal core routines? Here’s why: Working the core in a functional, progressive manner will give you nice, lean muscles that will be on display once that layer of fat is burned off by doing cardio and cleaning up your diet. You don’t want to spend months burning off that spare tire to reveal, well, nothing underneath.
While core exercises are not the most effective way to burn subcutaneous and visceral fat off your belly, they are the answer to toning the muscles underneath. As stated earlier, spot-reducing fat from your body is not realistic, but spot-toning your muscles most certainly is. For example, you can absolutely make the muscles in your legs stronger and more toned by doing lunges and squats; this maxim holds true for any muscle in the body. Putting repetitive stress on a muscle causes positive adaptations in those muscle fibers that range from improved cardiovascular efficiency to increased bone density and neuromuscular control. The bottom line is that if you put repetitive stress on your core muscles by doing the sculpting exercises in this book, you will improve the strength, power, endurance, and coordination of those muscles. All of these benefits are just lovely side effects of sculpting a gorgeous, enviable core!
I stopped doing crunches and finally got the kick-ass core I always wanted!
I STARTED THE CORE ENVY PLAN while I was flying all over the country for interviews to get into a medical residency program. I figured if the plan fit my hectic schedule, I could realistically stick with it long-term. My midsection has always been my Achilles heel, so to speak, and I had been including lots of crunches in my workout routine. If I only had 20 minutes to work out, I would choose crunches over cardio because I honestly believed it would give me better results. The thought of skipping crunches when my tummy was my trouble area seemed ridiculous to me . . . until I was introduced to the Core Envy program. The explanation of what types of core work are effective made sense to me as a doctor, so I decided to give it a shot.
The plan was super-easy to follow because it doesn’t require any equipment or a gym membership—I was able to complete all the core sculpting routines and the cardio workouts at home or in my hotel room. Sometimes I went outside to do the cardio, but there were several days when I just banged out 18 minutes of jumping jacks or dancing in order to get my heart rate up to the prescribed level.
Initially, I worried about whether the diet would work for me because I don’t have control over what’s put in front of me at most of my meals—sometimes it’s pizza and breadsticks for lunch, and I have to decide whether to eat it or go hungry . . . or at least that’s what I’ve always told myself. If you have no choice in what’s put in front of you, then it’s not your fault if you can’t make good decisions, right? That was my excuse, and I’d been using it for a long time. Allison’s plan taught me that I always have some degree of control over what I eat; I just have to be prepared. In other words, I began assuming that the food put in front of me was going to be unhealthy, so I prepared by packing snacks in my purse like healthy bars, pieces of fruit, nuts, and hard-boiled eggs. These items became as essential to my leaving-the-house routine as grabbing my wallet and keys.
By the end of 8 weeks, I had lost 2 inches off my stomach, and my stubborn muffin top was gone. More importantly, I finally understand how to structure my workout routine and my diet to get the results I want in my midsection. They say that knowledge is power, and I’m feeling very powerful thanks to the Core Envy program!
