Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Cataclysm
My brother's buddy who is a nutritionist told me that situps is the only exercise you could do everyday without problems. The only reason why I'm doing only these exercises is because I dont have access to a gym, this is all outta the house and I don't have TONS of freetime to do all this, I take 15 credit hours at school and study a ton. Figured this would help build upper body, some lower body, cut away the fat.. even tho there isn't much lol and just get me in overall better shape.
|
your brothers buddy is wrong. the abdominals are just like any other muscle in the body. if you exercise them hard, they'll break down, and then if given time to rest (with good nutrition) will grow. otherwise your constantly breaking them down without giving them a chance to heal and grow. what he told you is a common exercise myth (another is that you can spot reduce stomach fat with situps, unfortunatly you can't).
two other things i guess i should mention about them are:
1) you don't need to exercise them any more than any other muscle group... what i mean is, if you want to build them up, you should be doing no more than 8 (10 at the real max). if you can do that easily with good form, then get a weight plate or something to weight you down. if you get into the 15+ range then that will help increase the vasularity of them (increasing their endurance) but it won't really help you build the muscles (as an okay analogy, think about running... it increases the number of blood vessels in yoru muscles but doesn't enlarge them).
2) do crunches, not situps. situps can cause lower back injurys because (and someone correct me if this isn't quite right) the hip flexors do much of the work and pull on the lower spine where they originate. this is not good.
some other general ex. suggestons...
look into HIIT. research so far shows that it improves body composition more than just low-intensity cardio long distance cardio.
go to some mens magizines sites... you should be able to find something on at least one of them about exercises you can do with virtually no equipment. like exercises that can be done while traveling and what not, so that might get you a few more exercises for your entire body that won't involve buying weights or going to the gym.