This question comes in a lot for our in home personal training team: Does the ab roller give people better abdominal muscles?
Technically, if you use the ab roller properly and often enough for your fitness levels, then YES, it will improve the abilities of your abdominal muscles. But, what is your ultimate goal in using the ab roller? Is it really to improve those muscles or to burn the fat surrounding them? Nine times out of ten, people are using the ab roller for the purpose of weight loss, and this is not a good use of your limited, precious exercise time.
If you're strictly looking to increase endurance and strength in your abdominal wall, then go ahead and use the ab roller. If your concern is more about the "laundry" that lies above your "washboard abds" then you need to better identify your goal: You're not after "better abdominal muscles". Nope. You're after "fat loss". And, unfortunately, fat loss won't come from using the ab roller.... Not much anyway.
For fat loss, you need moving exercise of your bigger muscles at moderate to high intensity (this is not suitable for those of serious medical conditions or uncontrolled COPD). And, you need to get a handle on your total calories coming in vs going out in the average week. After all, if you burn 1000 calories in a workout but then consume an extra 1000 calories later, then you're not going to achieve much weight loss from that session. (By the way, some sugary alcoholic beverages contain 1000 calories in just one drink!)
You can train the core abdomen muscles all you'd like (and believe me, it's very good for you to do so), but when it comes to burning bodyfat, there is a world of difference in training and lifestyle methods.
Perfect Personal Training is America's choice for in home personal training and exercise science. Our personal trainers and wellness coaches are top certified, degreed, highly knowledgeable, and extremely experienced. For a free in home consultation with a top certified Perfect Personal Trainer, please visit us online at http://perfectpersonaltraining.com/ or call 877-698-3648. Our top certified personal trainers are always eager to help!
Typically anything that says it will target one specific area is a gimmick, preying on the need of Americans to do things the easy way. Spot Reducing has been shown to be a myth...unless you count plastic surgery and liposuction, then yes, it's possible but very expensive and painful.
ReplyDeleteAb rollers, those electrical stimulation gizmos, the Perfect Sit-Up, Iron Gym, BowFlex, Kettlebells, and on and on are all completely worthless if the person who orders them actually uses them regularly, EATS A HEALTHY DIET, and performs cardiovascular exercises. The big problem is in the advertising; it's misleading at best. The wording of the commercials infer the trainee's ability to get washboard abs by just performing a few minutes a day of the exercise. What is normally left out of the ad, save for the TINY, tiny fine print at the bottom of the screen, is the fact that a trainee must eat a healthy diet, perform cardio, and the results are not typical.
America is a country still consumed by the need for "Instant Gratification" and we want everything the easy way. People hate to sweat and breathe hard but as we can see from every day life, America needs to start working hard. Our easy way of life has vaulted to the status of World's Most Obese Nation. We are supposed to be a leading nation, THE nation among nations. Yet we are grossly overweight and out of shape.
Gimmick products like the Ab Roller can help, but you won't lose weight and you won't get a six-pack without hard work and clean eating. You can definitely strengthen your abs but without getting rid of the fat that lies on top of them, what's the point of wasting your money?