Fabila's Fitness Club

  I n my article "We All Have Six Packs" , I highlighted some benefits of having strong abdominal muscles. Besides looking good physically, other benefits include: better breathing, improved posture, resulting in less back pains, helps a person avoid injury when performing tasks that put stress on the back and torso, and helping the body to heal faster after an injury or surgery to the spine. No doubt, exercise helps strengthen your abdominal muscles. I have highlighted below four exercises which I have found effective. I currently do these exercises at least thrice a week. Long Lever Crunches You start by lying face up on the floor, one leg up and the other extended, just like in the image below, both arms should also be extended. 

A  popular question people ask me is “how do I lose belly fat?” Without a doubt everyone, male and female, wants a slimmer waistline and toned abs. There are also many remedies offered, pills, dieting, or exercise. You probably have tried all the solutions available on the internet, but with little or no progress. I am not going to tell you to do any particular exercise or eat a particular food...Okay, maybe I will. The purpose of this article is to highlight some facts you need to know about losing tummy fat.

T his is a follow up to my previous article “Meet Mr & Mrs Pot Belly”. In this article, I would be sharing some exercise tips to help you get rid of your excess tummy fat. Before I do, let me quickly share a personal story. Before my fitness career begun, my Aunt used to make fun of me because of my tummy. When I lay on my side, my tummy would sit on the bed and she would scream “chei! Your tummy is lying down with you”. She just could not understand how one’s tummy could be that big. Of course she had a flat tummy so she could laugh comfortably. 

P ot belly, in my part of the world could be considered a sign of prosperity, although in more recent times, this view might be different. When I began my career as a zumba instructor, I was very optimistic that was the end to all my tummy fat struggles. Boy was I wrong. Don’t get me wrong, my tummy fat did reduce drastically, it had to as I had dropped from a UK size 12 to UK 8 in three months. But for a size 8, I still was not content with my tummy size; I had hoped that being a fitness instructor would tone my abdominal muscles in a few weeks (I know that’s not realistic). It was then I understood that a cardio routine was not enough to fight this particular challenge; I needed to watch my diet and also strengthen my abdominal muscles. This led me to introduce more core routines to my workouts. Even then, fighting my tummy fat was still a huge challenge. This led me to ask why most people struggled with tummy fat as I observed that most of my clients were in the same shoes, th...