Many new entrants to the gym will walk into the gym with the exciting goal of doing crunches until their abdominal muscles are a svelte collection of rippling muscles, cut out of the former dough that was their midsection.  They’ll enter the abdominal training area – despite being 30% body fat – and do an hour of crunches, several times per week.  Over the months, their midsections will become harder – under the fat – but to the naked eye, they’ll still be sporting the same spare tire they started with.  And in some cases, it might stick out a bit further, due to the increased size of the abdominal muscles underneath the layer of fat.

There is no such thing as spot reduction.  Is it a myth?  The body fat, which covers your body, does so in a fairly uniform fashion.  While there are some areas, which tend to hold more body fat reserves (waistline in men and legs/glutes in women), those brand new abdominal muscles are never going to emerge until the body fat over them – and on top of the entire body – is removed.  New trainers to the gym don’t realize this fact. They walk right past the cardio machines and enter the ab area, day after day.  Little do they know that spending a few hours each week in the cardio area would make their abdominal effort display so much more effectively.  Even more so, their chest, arms, back, and legs would look much better too, with lower body fat levels.

There is one misleading factor, which causes people to believe in the myth of spot reduction.  Let’s say you’re a fairly well trained athlete, sitting at 12% body fat.  You begin training abdominals religiously.  They will begin to look better and better.  They will stand out.  You will look leaner, even if you are not.  Your midsection will look tighter, even if the body fat is he same.  This is because at 12% body fat, the muscle growth will create separation.  Separation is defined as the disconnection of muscle groups.  The more advanced goal – definition – comes when a single muscle group is able to be separated visually, and only occurs and very low body fat levels.