You might look at your body and think there’s an area or two that you’d like to spot train. You wonder if that’s even possible. You’d like to develop a tighter abdomen or bigger biceps and you think that it’s possible just to focus on what you want.
The answer to the questions lies somewhere between what’s believed to be a myth and what the truth is. First, the words spot training and spot reduction are often confused with each other.
The first one has to do with defining muscle in one area of the body, while the other has to do with getting rid of fat in that area. The fact is that when you spot train an area, you’ll be performing certain exercises that strengthen and build muscle.
But these trouble spots that you have, and everyone has these spots, may not reach the perfection that you’re looking for if you’re trying to target specific fat loss. However, you will be able to shape your body using spot training.
As you work on a particular area of your body, the muscle strength develops and you end up losing weight as you build those muscles. The fat doesn’t necessarily go anywhere, but what happens is you lose weight and fat throughout your body rather than in only the particular area that you want to target.
So if losing fat in an area is your goal for spot training, just know that’s not going to happen. When you work out, even if you’re working on that problem area, you can’t just tell your body to take away that fat in that one spot.
The fat that’s burned comes from a variety of areas all over and may not concentrate in the area of your choosing. But you do lower your BMI, which is a win-win situation. Spot training isn’t necessarily wrong.
But you don’t get the same exercise benefits as you do if you concentrate on working out the entire body. By targeting your whole body, you use more muscle groups. This firms up those muscles and raises the amount of calories that you burn during a workout.
You might imagine spot training as the key to changing your body. What you have to understand is that just because you hone in on something like spot training abdominal muscles, if you don’t concentrate on lowering your overall BMI, those muscles will never develop that defined look you seek.
This is why doing 500 abdominal crunches by itself daily never gives you the six pack abs you want. Instead, you need to focus on cardio, eating healthy and strength training for your entire body not just building up one area. Then, you get to see the results that you want – including those six pack abs – and the reason is because you’ve lost fat all over your body.
