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I'm a 20 years old male who's always been fit. I love sport, and I always practice them such as football, rock climbing, skateboardind... and more. But I want to have a toned body. We never see my abs on my belly. So my question is:

How to get rid of my belly fat? It seems all the sport I did during my life did not diminish my belly fat.

Thank you

Napster
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  • How often you do ab exercises? How many sets and reps/set? – TigerTiger Apr 18 '12 at 08:20
  • Long non-stop (60+ minutes, the more the better) aerobic exercise, e. g. jogging twice a week with heartbeat at ≈140 bpm, is pretty effective, at least it worked well for me and a couple of my colleagues. – Mischa Arefiev Apr 18 '12 at 08:29
  • Oh, and if you do a lot of abdominal muscle exercise you will have nice abs but it will still be hidden behind fat. – Mischa Arefiev Apr 18 '12 at 08:30
  • What is your body mass index? Do you have any idea what your body fat percentage is? – rthsyjh Apr 18 '12 at 15:26
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    Also See: http://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/869/best-exercise-to-lose-belly-fat-fast – rthsyjh Apr 18 '12 at 15:32
  • @Wbdvlpr doing ab exercises has little to nothing to do with losing fat. Ab exercises do not remove belly fat, they just build muscles underneath. In order to have "abs", you need to be in the 8-12% body fat range. – Moses Apr 18 '12 at 15:32

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The short and pithy answer to your question is "the same way you lose fat even if you aren't fit". What this boils down to getting your food and exercise on a plan that will work for you. There's a couple ways to approach it:

  • High protein diet: While some reports state you don't need more than .82g protein per lb body weight (for body builders), protein does keep you satiated longer and requires more calories to process than any other macro nutrient.
  • Increase conditioning: Conditioning is anything that gets your heart rate up and improves your cardiovascular system. This includes stuff like hitting a tire with a sledgehammer, running hill sprints, barbell complexes. I find those more fun than running on a treadmill for what feels like hours on end.
  • Increase work: Whether body weight work or Smolov squat programming, several people have experienced their fat trimming down even though they haven't changed their eating habits.

Chad Waterbury's article on the Pullup/Lunge/Pushup 60 day challenge sheds some more light on the last bullet point. In short, it all started out when a guy Chad was coaching said that the more pushups he does, the leaner he gets. Essentially, High Frequency Training (HFT) is very effective for body transformations. The PLP challenge is designed to maintain decent shoulder health and overall body work. The way it works is you start out with a set of 1 or 10 (depending on how many pullups you can do at once).

  • Day 1: starting number of reps: pullups, reverse lunges (each leg), pushups
  • Day 2: add one to the number of reps: pullups, reverse lunges, pushups
  • .... keep adding one each day until
  • Day 60

If you have to split the work up into sets do it. You just have to get the total number of reps in that day. You start low, and keep building. By the end of the challenge, you will be doing 60 or 69 reps on day 60 (depending on your starting point). Another important part of the challenge is not to do more than the prescribed reps.

Berin Loritsch
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  • This is my first time hearing about HFT (googling it I got a bunch of results for high-volume stock trading). I think I'm going to give the PLP challenge a go and see how it works. – Moses Apr 18 '12 at 21:10
  • Good answer Berin. Have any experience with Smolov? Just about to try it. P.S.: hyvaa paivaa! – Daniel Jan 10 '14 at 16:11
  • My experience with it was not favorable. Don't go chasing numbers, and only count good reps. It's tempting to just put in a lot of work without concentrating on form, and when you retest mid-way with a high squat you will fall to pieces with the last phase. That was my experience. – Berin Loritsch Jan 10 '14 at 16:31
  • Cool. Thanks! I figured you'd have some knowledge about it. I was thinking of doing just the base mesocycle (seems like some people have had success doing that). What do you think about the 3-per week routine listed here to ramp up? My squat's about 335 and I did Broz/Bulgarian for about 3 months (max out on squat daily) so I'm no stranger to high volume, but I've only been doing twice per week squats right now. Think I should just dive in to Smolov? – Daniel Jan 10 '14 at 17:07
  • The introductory and base mesocycle were fine. I ran into problems with the intensity phase, and that's where I suffered some confidence problems in the squat. Those are being remedied now that I have a coach and a program that's a better fit for me. NOTE: @Doc, we may want to move this discussion onto chat. – Berin Loritsch Jan 10 '14 at 20:08
  • @Berin Loritsch - Why reverse lunges? Can i replace them with forward walking lunges? Is Day 1 based on failure as the baseline? For example, if i can do 10 push-ups (to failure), would the next day be 11 push-ups? Does it matter what types of push-ups e.g. diamond, decline, etc? Do you perform the same types of push-ups each day? Is there a break day at all? Do you perform these when the aim is to primarily lose fat only to start with? – Motivated Dec 26 '15 at 06:51
  • @Motivated, I don't see why not. But I would direct questions about specific programs to the person who wrote them. – Berin Loritsch Dec 26 '15 at 14:17