You made the decision to loose your stomach and shape your waistline. Congratulations! You even bought an ab-roller or other equipment to achieve this goal. For the last few weeks or month you worked with your ab-roller every day, doing one abdominal exercise after another. Sometimes for long periods of time a day. You are determined, you want to make this work. But eventually you realize it isn't working. Your stomach does not disappear and some of you make the terrifying discovery of even haven gotten bigger in the midsection instead of smaller. 

 

Why? Is it because the ab-roller doesn't work, or is it because your body doesn't react like others? The answer to both questions is no. Everybody, no matter what age, genetics and background can get in shape. When it comes to the ab-roller it works if you use it as it was designed, which is simply to relax the neck area when doing crunches and other variations of abdominal training to relieve tension and to make sure you are not using any muscles other than the muscles of he midsection of your body. For your abdominal muscle itself, the ab-roller will not do more than regular crunches without equipment. 

 

So why does training your abs every day not get rid of your stomach? Because losing your stomach means losing body fat and being lean. It is about using energy, burning calories and lowering you body fat percentage. There is no on spot fat reduction unless you undergo surgery like liposuction which I don't support and feel is most of the time unnecessary because the same results could have been achieved with proper training. There are some rare cases where surgery is the only answer, but for most o fus exercise is the better one. 

 

Your body burns calories from all over your body, not just one spot. This means that if you work your legs or your back you bum calories. If you have too much weight on your stomach then this is where you will bum the calories. Even though you burn them because you work your legs. Working a certain area of your body means shaping this area and toning the muscle, not burning the fat right there. Again, you bum fat all over wherever it manifests, but you need to work hard and use up energy. Training only your stomach just doesn't involve enough muscle tissue and movement to really get a good calorie burning going. Still, training your abs is important to build the abdominal muscle so you are able to see the shape of the muscle once you have less body fat. Also ab exercises are a must do for people with lower back problems and people that want to prevent them, because stronger abs take workload and pressure of the back. 

 

So we should train our abs, to shape our midsections, but not expect those exercises to bum fat to show the midsection. You will bum the fat by training large muscle groups like your legs with strength training, aerobics, and by watching your food and eating healthy and low-fat. 

 

Another important issue is the frequency of your ab-training. The fact is that your abdominal muscle reacts differently than the rest of the muscles on your body. It reacts faster and it needs less recovery time between training. Every muscle on your body, with the exception of abs and calves, needs 48 hours rest to recover. Abs and calves only need 24 hours for full recovery, so you could train them every day. But only a pro body builder that needs thick and big abs as part of the criteria in a competition or a power lifter that needs big, strong abs to stabilize his body for perfect form while working other muscles, or somebody combating health related issues should train abs every day. 

 

If you just like to have a small, shaped waist and stomach or would like to strengthen your lower back, training your abs 3x a week, 1-2 exercises, 3 sets per exercise is all you should do. Even so, in strength training, for every muscle and every goal, like getting smaller or getting bigger, rehabilitation and improving bone density, high resistance/heavy weights is the answer. I am not a believer of heavy weights and high resistance when it comes to your abdominal training. Because your abdominal reacts faster it also has a tendency to get bigger and build bulk fast if worked too heavily (weight added to body weight) or worked to often (working abs everyday and getting bigger instead of smaller because the muscle develops under the fat). Unless you want to build bulk, train your abs without added weight or weight machines and work with high repetitions, 20-50 and up per set. Increase repetitions and not resistance if it gets easy. 

 

I lost 4 inches in my waist following the guidelines above. I know it works and it can work for you.