Written By: Nirmalya Dutta | Updated : September 25, 2014 5:21 PM IST
We don't know when it happened exactly, but at one point in time, some guys got fascinated with six pack abs and it just blew out of proportion. Even our top Bollywood stars have succumbed to the six-pack abs hoopla and they all seem to be outdoing one another with abs so protruding you wouldn't be surprised if it whacked you in the face. Our earlier stars made it much easier to copy them (all you needed to tell the barber is Amitabh Bachchan baal kat do), but now getting Farhan Akhtar-like abs is a completely different ask. But it's not undoable and for that you need to learn the common misconceptions about abs. Here are the top 6 myths:
Lots of crunches and sit-ups will give you six pack abs
Somehow the sit-up and abdomen crunches has gotten associated with six pack abs and thousands now believe that doing a lot of them is a way to a flat tummy. Sadly, life is never that easy. A flat abdomen comes from a combination of a healthy diet and exercise with a healthy dose of strength training and cardio. It's impossible to spot reduce i.e. lose weight from just one part of the body. What you have to understand is everyone has abs, the guys who can show ripped flat abdomen are those who've managed to get rid of the fat covering it.
You need to crash diet to get six pack abs
They say abs are made in the kitchen but that doesn't mean that you go on a crazy crash or fad diet to lose weight. What you need are six, small balanced meals throughout the day which should include the right amount of proteins, carbs, fats, minerals and other nutritional groups without which you will never shape up. Crash diets don't help since the moment you stop them, you go back to being the way you are. Also they slow down your metabolism, which will affect your body's ability to burn fat.
To get abs you need to say bye, bye to carbs
Ever since Atkins brought out his revolutionary diet, it's become a fad to cut down on carbs. That's about the worst thing you can do since your body needs carbs to function. However, you should avoid carbs which are digested fast such as white bread and instead focus on complex carbs. The best time to have simple carbs would be just after a workout when your body needs it for restoration.
The only abs exercises are crunches and sit-ups
While there's nothing wrong with these two exercises, they are not the only ones that can help work your abs muscles. While it goes without saying that you need cardio, you also need to compound exercises like the bench press, squats, pull-ups and deadlifts which target more than one muscle group. If you want abs specific exercises, there are leg raises, twists, side dumbbell bends, hanging leg raises, plank, side plank and the wood chop to name just a few exercises. Here are some exercises for flat abs.
Upper abs and lower abs need to be trained separately
No one knows where people got the idea; you can't really isolate the lower abs or the upper abs. They are all part of the same muscle and can't be contracted independent of the other. It's just that during a regular crunch you feel like your upper abs are being worked even though the entire muscle is worked. Similarly when you do leg raises, you are working the entire abs but feel more involvement in the lower abs. But they are not isolation exercises and won't help you lose belly fat from the upper or lower region separately.
Also try these other abs exercises:
You could also try out these exercises for specific body parts:
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