If Your Goal Is to Lose Belly Fat, This Is the Routine You Should Be Doing
You've been working out, eating healthy, and losing weight, but you're still not seeing progress in your midsection. What gives? If you can't seem to lose the fat around your stomach, aside from tweaking your diet, you can also tweak your workouts to help see results.
Hundreds of crunches are the answer, right?! Not so much. Jade Jenny, head coach and owner of Champlain Valley CrossFit says, "There are really no exercises to reduce belly fat, unfortunately this is the age-old myth. People think they can get abs, and just abs." So while crunches won't erase your belly fat, hours of steady-state cardio also isn't the best option.
The most effective type of cardio that's proven to target belly fat is high-intensity interval training (HIIT). And no need to suffer for hours at the gym. "The whole workout, including warmup, doesn't need to be more than 45 minutes to be effective," fitness instructor John Kersbergen told POPSUGAR. He added that three to four times a week is enough.
You can incorporate high-intensity intervals into your basic cardio workouts by adding high-intensity sprints to your runs, rides, and swims. But if you really want more bang for your buck, perform compound strength training moves to build muscle, burn calories, and sculpt abs. We're talking burpees, weighted squats and thrusters, and pull-ups.
Here are some HIIT workouts you can do to help reduce body fat:
Once you start incorporating HIIT and compound strength training moves into your routine, you're likely to notice a difference in your belly. Just be mindful that while you may not see the numbers on the scale going down because you're building muscle, your body composition is changing. So celebrate your nonscale victories! You'll know it's working when your core starts feeling stronger, your shirts feel looser, and when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you see more definition in your abs. Keep it up!
