Doug Kelsey's Blog

How to Get a Flatter Belly

Each year, millions of Americans all get excited about the same time and about the same thing: working out to re-shape their bodies; to look better; to have a flatter belly. So, they join a gym and hit the cardio and weight machines. Most of them quit within three months and take their less than flat bellies home.

If you want a flatter belly, you have to do at least two things:

1. Reduce subcutaneous fat
2. Increase muscle tone

Subcutaneous fat is fat under your skin. It’s what covers your abdominal muscles. You can do hundreds of crunches a day and never flatten your belly because crunches won’t help you much in shedding body fat.

To get rid of the fat, you’ll need to examine your diet and perform exercise routines that increase your fat burning.

This isn’t an article about nutrition but here are a few things to consider. Each pound of fat contains 3500 calories of energy. So, you either have to reduce your intake of calories by 3500 to lose a pound of fat (and not all in one day!) or increase your expenditure of calories through exercise or both.

And, of course, a calorie is not a calorie. A calorie of sugar is processed differently in your body than a calorie of broccoli. I suggest examining your meals by keeping a food diary for one week. Just write down everything you eat and drink everyday for seven days. Then, compare your entries to the Mediterranean Diet (you can find this here). Make a note of where your meal plan differs and then try to align your plan with the Mediterranean (this meal plan has been scientifically studied and proved to be effective).

If you reduce your caloric intake by 200 calories per day (that’s 1 ½ Cokes or, 1 glass of wine) and increase your expenditure of calories by 300 (jog / walk 30 minutes or lift weights for 30 minutes), you’ll have an overall positive fat burn of 500 calories. If you do this everyday for one month (30 days), you’ll have burned 15,000 calories and lost just over 4 lbs. of fat! Keep this up over one year and you can lose up to 50lbs! (assuming you really need to lose 50 lbs.)

The amount of fat you can safely lose depends on how much fat you're carryingg. You can test your body fat levels several ways but the easiest is to use a scale that incorporates body fat measurement. These tools are fairly accurate (the gold standard is under water weighing). Once you know your body fat level in percent, compare it to the chart (on the right) to find your ideal amount. Less is not always better. You need a certain amount of fat so avoid chasing the very bottom end of the fat scale.

Once you’ve lost some fat, you’ll need to “tone” or increase the resting tension level of the stomach muscles. A lot of people think that sit-ups or crunches are the best way to do this but not only are sit-ups not all that great to tone muscle, they can injure your spine.

What makes a muscle “toned”? Well, strength training. All types of strength training exercises can improve your muscle tension but there is one type of exercise that is a little better than others: isometrics.

An isometric exercise is a type of exercise that makes your muscles work but does not produce any movement. For example, when you carry a heavy object, in order to not drop the load, your arm muscles use an isometric contraction. When you mop the floor, your trunk muscles use isometric contractions to hold your body at a particular angle. Isometrics are used often in everyday life and an isometric exercise will recruit about 5% more muscle fiber than other types of exercise.
    To use isometrics for your abdominal muscles, try these drills:

1. Single Leg Lower – Hold.
   1. Lie on your back with knees bent; feet on the floor.
   2. Lift one knee toward your chest until the knee is pointing toward the ceiling.
   3. Straighten your leg.
   4. Brace the abdomen, exhale slowly and slowly lower the leg. Stop the motion if you feel your lower back starting to arch or if your back hurts (it shouldn’t).
   5. When your straight leg is aligned with the other leg, hold the position for 45 seconds. Add short bursts of exhaling as if you’re trying to blow out a candle.
   6. Do 5 repetitions on each leg.
2. Double Leg Lower – Hold
   1. Repeat the above but instead of lowering one leg, lower both. Stop the motion when your legs are about 18 inches off the floor and hold.
3. Kicks
   1. This is a progression of #2. Once you reach the holding position, make small kicking motions with your legs while keeping them straight.

If you do these drills every other day, you’ll be sore in the stomach region (but not for long) and you’ll notice that your belly feels tighter within a few weeks. When the drills feel easier (hard to imagine, I know), you can add more repetitions or add a small amount of weight to your leg.

To get a flatter belly, burn more fat and tone the abdominals using isometrics.

The Spiderman Push Up

When I showed the Spiderman Push Up to my friend and business partner Ryan Smith, he said immediately, "Maybe we should call that The Villegas!" I didn't get it. Then, Ryan reminded me that Camilo Villegas, the pro golfer, has an unusual posture on the green as he tries to determine the line. It looks a lot like the end position of the Spiderman Push Up.

A Spiderman Push Up is a push up but in the down position you pull one knee up toward your shoulder. Then, when you push back up, you return the leg to the original position. On the next repetition, you move the other leg in the same way.

Why do this drill? Well, it's one way to increase the intensity of a push up. A regular push up uses about 70% of your body weight as resistance. A Spiderman Push Up increases that load another 10% and it creates an unbalanced load; more load on the side of the leg that has moved.

If a regular push up is too difficult for you, you can modify it by starting on hands and knees instead of hands and toes. I also like to use a heavy band to counter the weight of the body. Here's a video of it.

Since this is an advancement of the regular push up, look for the common form faults and either correct the faults or make the drill easier to perform.

The Staff Lunge

The Staff Lunge is a form of the Overhead Lunge (typically done with a barbell or dumb bells), also sharing its form with the Crescent Lunge from Yoga, but is performed with a  dowel about 1.5 inches in diameter and three to four feet long.

To perform the Staff Lunge:

• Stand with your feet about shoulder width apart.
• Grasp the staff with hands slightly wider than shoulder width. 
• Raise the staff over head with elbows straight.
• Brace the abdomen as if you're about to get hit in the stomach and hold the brace throughout the drill.   
• Step forward into a lunge position focusing on maintaining balance and keeping the leg from wavering in or out (see image). 
  •  Keep the arms straight overhead. 
• Return to the starting position by pushing the heel into ground like you're trying to drive the ground away from you. 
• You've completed one repetition. 

This drill is surprisingly difficult. You might think that holding a wooden dowel would be just a bit harder than holding match sticks but it's not the dowel that makes it more difficult. It's the position of your arms and disturbance in balance.

When you perform a standard lunge with arms at your sides, the load of the arms adds little to the drill since the arms are so close to the body (center of gravity). But, with the arms overhead, the load increases by about 6-8% of your body weight. So, in my case weighing in around 200 lbs, the dowel adds about 12 lbs of extra load.

With both arms overhead, your balance is challenged especially if you have any flexibility limitations in your thoracic spine, or hips. To maintain your balance, your muscles contract quickly in multiple areas adding to the level of fatigue.

Of course, using a barbell and adding weight magnifies the difficulty. I suggest mastering the Staff Lunge first especially if you struggle keeping your arms overhead. You'll not be able to manage any additional load very well if the arms move forward during the lunge.

CONSIDERATIONS

Cervical Spine: Any time you lift your arms overhead, you increase the pressure in the cervical spine due to contraction of the deep spinal muscles and the more superficial scapular muscles such as the Levator Scapulae. People with degenerative disc or joint disease may need to start with one arm over head then progress to one arm with a light weight.

Shoulder: The last 20 to 30 degrees of shoulder flexion come from the thoracic spine. So, if the thoracic spine is relatively inflexible, when you perform the lunge, you may have difficulty holding the staff over head; the shoulders may drop some (from fully flexed to a less flexed position). The cure for this is to improve thoracic flexibility; not stretch the shoulder.

Lumbar Spine: Tight hip flexors on the side opposite of the lunging leg may increase compression in the lumbar spine by tethering the pelvis in a relatively anterior position. Pay attention to the curve of the spine. It should be smooth with no sharp angulations. Bracing the abdomen protects the spine so pay attention to fatigue in the brace. Improving the flexibility of the hip flexors will help but you may have to shorten the lunging step in the meantime.

Hip, Knee, Ankle: Your joints must tolerate body weight force, at least, for this drill to not overload one or more joints. If your hip is weak, the femur will rotate (adduct or abduct) during the lunge. If you lack talocrural dorsiflexion, pronation will increase usually in the forefoot which may also cause some femur motion. 

The Push Up

Why do a push up? Well, it's simple, portable, and stresses multiple body parts. You develop strength in the arms, trunk, neck, and lower back.

But, push ups, like any exercise, can can help you or hurt you depending on how you do them.

To perform a push up properly:

• Assume a hands and knees position on the floor with your hands aligned beneath and just outside your shoulders; fingers pointing straight ahead.
• Get up on your toes with your feet together; knees straight; hips in line with the trunk and knees.
• Look at the floor but keep your head in a straight line with your trunk, hips, and legs. 
• Brace the abdomen as if you're about to get punched and hold the brace through the drill.
• 
• Lower your self to the floor.
  • Keep your elbows from moving past a 45 degree angle to your trunk.
  • Stop the motion when your upper arm is even with the side of your chest (the drawing shows the elbows past the chest which in my opinion is too far; the head is also sagging too much).
• Push your self back to the starting position - that is one repetition.
  
• Repeat until
  • You cannot maintain the form or,
  • You cannot complete a repetition.

Form failure is common. If you allow the elbows to flare out form the side, the push up becomes easier but the stress on your shoulder joint goes up. If the exercise is too hard, you'll either allow your trunk to sag between your arms or you'll drop your head toward the floor or your lower back will sag (picture at the right has all three). Many trainers teach that you should touch your chest to the floor but, for most people, this places the humerus into extension under significant load and provides an unnecessary risk of injury to the shoulder.

Another biomechanical fault, but one you can't see your self, is a winging scapula. You may be able to hold the head, trunk, hips and knees in a straight line but the scapula could still be tilted off the chest wall. When this happens, the scapula also tilts anteriorly and increases the risk of impingement in the subacromial space.

The push up uses about 70% of your body weight as resistance and I think that until you can do at least 30, there's no need to do things like bench presses (and I question the value of it at all). A push up forces you to control more of your body and is plenty of load.

If you can't do a push up or can't do very many, start at an incline (e.g. on stairs). Find the angle where you can perform 15 repetitions. Do three sets of these every other day until you feel that 15 has become only moderately difficult (and you'll know this because you won't scrunch up your face or make noises). Then, lower your self down a step. Repeat this until you get all the way to the floor.

I've also used a Total Gym (the newer models have handles on the side of the sliding board) to reduce the push up load. I like the position - hands are under the shoulders; wrists are neutral; elbows tend to not flare out to the side. I helped a friend go from 0 push ups on the floor to 10 in under six weeks using the Total Gym. 

How many should you do? Well, that depends on your age and gender. I'm 52 and to place in the 90th percentile, I should be able to do 30 push ups; women should be able to do 25 modified push ups (on the knees instead of the toes). So, if you're younger, shoot for 40 or 50; older aim for 20 to 25.

And, what about speed? Some people claim you should perform push ups slowly (4 seconds down and eight seconds up for exmple). I don't know of any evidence that says a slow push up is any better than a faster push up. I prefer to use a "fast as you can" approach which means speed without sacrificing form.

CONSIDERATIONS

The wrist:

• I also like to use push up stands to place the wrists in a more neutral position. Most joints don't like to be stressed repeatedly at the end of range which is what push ups ask the wrist to do. Mid-range is less stressful.

The elbow:

• Hand positions that use internal rotation of the shoulder will create much higher forces in the elbow and should be avoided.

The cervical spine:

• Degenerative joint and / or disc disease of the cervical spine can be aggravated by the loads created in the cervical spine during a push up. The force of gravity wants to pull the head into flexion which is actually a rotary force. Your cervical muscles combat this rotation which increases stress on the cervical spine joints. And, the levator scapula muscle, which arises from the cervical spine, assists in abducting the scapula but to do this, it uses the cervical spine as a base from which to pull the scapula. This creates increased pressure in the neck and may create neck pain.

The shoulder:

• For people who have a history of multi-directional instability of the shoulder or posterior impingement, push ups can create too much posteriorly directed force in the glenohumeral joint. Make sure that the scapula is well positioned and that there's no sign of the humerus migrating posteriorly during the push up.