Have you ever seen that guy in the gym who spends 15-20 minutes just doing stomach crunchs or situps? One of the common misconceptions is that by doing a lot of ab exercises such as situps, will help you burn stomach fat. While ab workouts will help define your abs, if you have excess belly fat you still won't be able to see them. Simply doing a bunch of crunches will not burn the belly fat that is covering your abdominals.

The problem is that most people are searching for the wrong exercises and workout types to lose stubborn belly fat. Most people are searching for some miraculous combination of abs exercises combined into the best ab workout ever invented that will burn off their belly fat faster than you can read this article.

Unfortunately, abdominal workouts will only tone and strengthen the underlying abdominal muscles, not help shed the belly fat lying on top of them. What you really need to focus on is a full body strategic workout that will cause a much greater metabolic rate increase and fat-burning hormonal response from your training program as a whole. What is actually going to help burn the fat are exercises that challenge the rest of your body and force it to burn fat for needed energy.

One of the other misconceptions is that simply doing a lot of cardiovascular exercises will burn off that embarassing stomach fat... not true. What you really need is a much more rounded training program that focuses on training the entire body with resistance training and multi-joint exercises in a higher intensity fashion.

Short, high intensity workouts combined with a well balanced diet program is the real key secret to losing the extra stomach fat that covers up the abs. Ab workouts are definitely a part of this equation, but simply doing them on their own will not yield the results that you are looking for.

A true professional trainer will give you this same advice, but yet too many people are willing to follow programs that talk about quick results and fast weight loss. Most of these articles and programs are really written by people trying to cash in on one of the most searchd topics on the internet.. weight loss.

There is no doubt that ab workouts such as situps and push ups do have a relavence in all workout programs, but not in the way that most people associate them with. Ab exercises will help you strengthen and tone the abdominal muscles and are useful for other purposes such as a healthy back and posture when done correctly. But the fact remains that ab exercises are not necessary for fat loss.

Most full body workouts will actually target the abdominal muscles at the same time they are working other parts of the body. This indirect focus on the abs is the most beneficial since it is the primary muscles of the body that are going to help promote fat burning and weight loss.