It’s one of the BIGGEST debates in fitness industry history. And I’m going to set the record straight.
The spot reduction debate is raging again and frankly, the truth behind spot reduction is that it’s just NOT possible to get significant site specific fat loss from doing a particular exercise.
Sure, you can get results using spot muscle building, if you seek additional shape in a problem area. You’ll need to perform exercises that thoroughly work that area. But you can’t lose fat from any area you want.
In other words, doing a million crunches or side bends won’t do the trick to flatten your belly.
And to be completely honest with you, the “scientific research” suggesting you CAN, in fact, lose fat from a particular part of your body is flawed.
Take for example the 2006 study from the American Journal of Physiology, that suggested that during exercise, body fat is preferentially used from the area being trained.
Here’s what happened…
Scientists had male subjects perform single leg-extensions with lightweight for 30 consecutive minutes. They measured blood flow to the fat cells of the working leg, as well as the resting leg, and discovered increased blood flow and breakdown of fat in the exercising leg.
I see TWO major problems here:
- It’s NOT practical. Would you seriously do 30 minutes of consecutive single leg extensions to lose fat off your thighs? Ha. Of course not.
- They used a very small sample size of males only. Surely you know men and women have different hormonal responses to exercise? And our legs are not built the same way ;
So what is the solution?
Like I said, you CAN spot train to target a particular body part. But you also have to create a bigger caloric deficit, through diet and exercise to burn more total body fat!
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