These ab exercises don’t do much other than wreck your posture and put unnecessary strain on your lower back.  Here’s the thing, flexing (bending) your spine isn’t what your ab muscles are supposed to do.  The real function of your ab muscles are to maintain midline stability.

Basically, your abs are there to protect your back from bending and twisting too much.  It may seem contradictory at first, (especially if you’re a fan of ab exercises) but if you look at the functional anatomy of your abdominal muscles and spine, it completely makes sense.

Here’s a quick overview.

Individual joints in your spine actually doesn’t have a lot of mobility, in fact the joints are primarily made to bear axial loading (along a straight axis), rather than shearing and twisting.  So your spine can support heavy loads as long as it maintains neutral position which is it’s natural S curve.

Any deviation from that position can put significant strain on the individual joints in your spine.  It’s like the pillar of a house.  The pillar can support the weight of the house simply because it’s structure can disperse the weight evenly along the pillar.  But, once there’s a bend in the pillar, the weight can’t be evenly distributed anymore, and all of the weight gets put onto the small area where the bend occurred.

Eventually the pillar can’t sustain the weight and it collapses.  That’s essentially what happens when you injure your back.  Excessive flexion of your spine only weakens the neutral curve (or the S curve) of your spine, so you can’t bear as much weight.  So it makes sense to minimize excessive flexion of the spine.

Your abdominal muscles are attached to your spine, your ribs (both front and back), and your pelvis.  The muscle fibers run in all directions, up and down, diagonal, criss cross, and horizontal.  If your ab muscle were meant to flex (bend) your torso, don’t your think all of the fibers would just run up and down.

If you look at all other skeletal muscles, they all have one direction, which is why it’s meant to flex and extend. Take a look at your bicep muscles, it runs up and down along your arm, so when you flex it, your elbow naturally bends.

However, when you flex your torso, you’re essentially only activating one of six different ab muscles.  In fact, the only way to activate all of your ab muscle at once is by bracing your stomach muscles like your about to get punched in the stomach.  And the result of that action is spinal stabilization.  It basically makes your spine more rigid, there by protecting it.

There are many ways to activate and strengthen your ab muscles, but none of them involve flexing (bending) your torso.  So stop doing sit ups and side bends that weaken your spine and start doing more functional ab strengthening exercises like the plank.  Not convinced that exercises like the plank will work your abs like other traditional ab exercise?  Well, give extreme plank exercises a try and see if you feel differently afterwards

But having strong functional abs aren’t enough to get you a flat stomach.

In order to effectively get flat abs you have to burn the fat from your stomach.  The problem is you can’t target stomach fat.  That means when you burn off fat, you burn it off from your entire body.  But here’s the kicker, certain areas in your body are more resistant to fat burning for a specific reason…insulin insensitivity.  And one of the most common areas effected by insulin insensitivity is your belly.

Your insulin spikes every time you eat, since most foods are broken down into sugar, which then enters your bloodstream.  However, depending on the type of food you eat, the level of insulin spike varies.  The more you consume sugar or foods that break down quickly into sugars like pasta, bread, rice and other starchy foods, the more your insulin has to work.  And the more you demand from your insulin without giving it a break, the more likely your insulin will loses it’s effectiveness or sensitivity.

As a result, insulin insensitivity causes more sugar to be in the blood stream and increase fat storage.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, it just so happens that your belly has one of the highest numbers of fat receptors in your entire body!  This means your poor diet causes your insulin to become insensitive which then causes more fat to be stored in your belly.  And here’s the kicker…once you’re insulin insensitive, your body becomes even better at storing fat.  So much so, that even a small amount of sugar you consume gets stored as fat. Yikes!

The best solution to fixing your insulin insensitivity, is by giving your insulin a break from working so hard, so it can regain it’s sensitivity.  And there are two effective ways that can do that: exercising and following a diet low in refined carbs.

• Studies have shown that exercise helps increase insulin sensitivity for up to 24 hours after exercising.  And by increasing the intensity of the exercise, you have the potential of improving insulin sensitivity for up to 15 days!

• Following a diet low in carbohydrates (especially low in refined carbs) helps keep your insulin from having to work hard, thereby allowing it to recover.  Eating complex carbs like vegetables and fruits which have a much lower sugar content and high fiber content is your best choice of carbohydrate foods.  This along with high quality proteins and good fats to provide your body with a balanced diet that keeps you insulin activity low.

So there you have it.  It may seem simple at first, but this information can really make a big difference if you apply it.  A combination of high intensity exercises and a well balanced diet (low in refined sugar and processed foods), along with functional ab strengthening exercises, will finally help you burn off the stubborn belly fat and get you a lean ripped core.