Fabila's Fitness Club

Y ou may or may not know this, but, we all have the six pack muscle, and by all, I mean man or woman, fat or thin, athletic or not, ALL. This muscle is called the Rectus Abdominis meaning “straight belly”. The reason why many people do not see their six pack muscle is because of the accumulated fat in the tummy region. If your goal therefore is to make your six pack muscle more visible, you should aim at shedding your tummy fat and strengthening the muscles. Exercise does not create six packs, God did, exercise only helps to enhance them. 

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...