Pooch belly is caused by neurological problems. Basically, the “wiring” of your lower abdominal muscles is inhibited, allowing the muscles to relax and bulge out.
This can be a result of:
- c-sections,
- food intolerances,
- food allergies, and
- visceroptosis, ie compression and displacement of internal organs.
How to lose belly pooch
Assuming that you don’t have excess belly fat, here are 2 tips to lose belly pooch.
1. Food allergies and intolerances
Many people are unaware that they are intolerant to gluten in wheat (and other grains) and/or dairy. Food intolerances or allergies can cause inflammation, gas and bloating in lower intestines that result in pooch belly appearance.
Here’s how to test if you are intolerant to wheat and/or dairy. Eliminate wheat and dairy products from your diet for 2 weeks. See how you feel and look. You may notice some positive changes that include losing belly pooch, losing body fat, resolving certain health issues (diabetes, chronic headaches, eczema, skin allergies, etc) and improved energy levels.
After the 2 weeks, reintroduce them one at a time to find out whether you are intolerant to one or both of them.
Most foods such as bread, cereal, crackers, cake, etc contain gluten from wheat or other grains (oats, barley, rye). It may not be possible to eliminate them completely from your diet. However, you may want to reduce its consumption as the first step to losing your belly pooch or a better health. Alternatively, choose gluten free food products where available.
2. Core exercises
Muscles that have been cut as a result of surgeries such as hysterectomies, c-sections and hernias tend to lack communication with the nervous system, thus causing a pooch belly. Perfoming certain exercises can help to re-establish this communication, tighten core muscles and help you lose belly pooch.
Check out some of the recommended core exercises by David Grissafi here:
(This is a guest post by Craig Ballantyne, author and creator of TT for Abs DVD)
The thought of having to do an additional 20-30 minutes of abdominal work after a regular workout can sometimes be enough for you to skip the ab training altogether. But, with these six upper body exercises, you’ll gain all the benefits and more of a regular ab workout, without the extra time.
This 15-minute upper body workout will not only build your arms, your chest, and your back, but every one of these exercises is also going to work your abdominals.
So this workout will include as I mentioned 6 exercises, but they will be broken down into 3 supersets at 5 minutes each.
So, the first superset will pair chin-ups with spiderman pushups.
Now, just because these aren’t specific abdominal exercises don’t think your abs will walk away unscathed. I remember training a client before and a couple of days after doing the chinup exercise she commented how shocked she was that her abs were so sore.
With proper form, the chin-up exercise can very powerfully target your abs. For proper form, begin in the dead hang position. Now, keeping your body tight, brace your abs and pull your body up and chin over the bar, then in a controlled fashion, lower your body down. You will noticeably feel this exercise working your lats and your biceps.
Perform enough repetitions that take you until one short of failure. For example, if you can do 15 repetitions, then only do 14 and so on.
After the chin-up exercise, you will move into the spiderman pushup. In this exercise, you will get into a regular pushup
position, and then as you come down bring your knee up to your elbow and back down. Alternate sides.
As previously noted, each superset pairing will be done in five minute intervals. Once finished with the first superset, move onto the next upper body combination of one-arm standing dumbbell shoulder press and heavy weighted dumbbell rows.
For the one-armed shoulder press exercise, place the DB at shoulder height with your palm facing outward. Next, brace your abs and place your opposite hand on your side to ensure your obliques are working while pressing up with the DB. Do eight repetitions for one side, and then switch to the other side.
Immediately after completing your repetitions for the shoulder press, move to DB rows. This time you will choose a weight you can normally do 10 times, but now try to get 12 repetitions. However, be sure to use only good form.
By keeping your body and back in a straight position, you will end up working your abdominals very hard, especially as you get closer to failure and your obliques work against rotation. If you find that you need to take a 5-10 second rest after ten repetitions in order to use perfect form for the remaining two, then do that.
Again, you will do this superset for five minutes going back and forth between these two exercises.
To finish off the 15-minute workout, you’ll do two arm exercises that simultaneously work your abdominals. The first exercise is the lying dumbbell triceps extension. Now, in order to get a good ab workout from this exercise, when you’re at the bottom position, drop a little more and you stretch your abs. Then, bring the dumbbells back up overhead and repeat.
That little extra stretch at the bottom of the exercise will really work your abdominals to give you that six pack abs look, much like the stability ball rollout when you stretch out at the end of that exercise.
The final exercise is the one-armed standing dumbbell curl. For this exercise you want to begin in a braced position. Since you will be using a heavy weight, your abs will have to work very hard throughout this exercise. To get in proper position, if your right arm is working, then your left leg will be in front. You can do this exercise for 6-8 repetitions per side.
That’s the 15-minute upper body workout that will work your abs just as hard if not harder than any ab crunching workout you could possibly do.
For DVD workouts using these exercises please visit:
“Stomach exercise” is the most frequently asked about and searched on (via internet) yet misunderstood subject in the entire field of health, fitness and exercise. And it’s no wonder. Regardless of age, experience or gender, everyone wants a flat “stomach” because the abdominal region is the true showcase of your physique. Since the abs are usually the last place to “shape up” and “lean out,” then most people would say that if you’ve got abs, you’ve got it all.
Well, in my way of thinking, this is only partially true. There’s more to a complete physique than “abdominal exercises” and “six pack abs” and most people are completely wrong about “stomach exercises” and “”stomach muscles.” (you’ll find out why in just a moment)…
The Difference Between “6-Pack Abs” And Truly “Fit Abs”
Having a great looking set of abs is very much a matter of low body fat. But make no mistake, just being lean and seeing a “six-pack” doesn’t mean you are strong, fit or conditioned. Real fitness means more than visible muscle development, it means strength, endurance, and stability, and this type of true functional fitness does not come from merely eating the right foods or reducing your body fat.
Nutrition is so important that you could even say that “abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym” and you would not be telling a lie. But this clever maxim is not telling the whole truth either. Great abs come from nutrition AND training, not one or the other. The training develops them. The nutrition uncovers them.
Don Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in America in 1493 looking for a fountain of youth and today in the “stomach exercise” marketplace, it seems that far too many people are looking for a “magic fountain” in order to flatten their waistlines.
Ponce never found the fountain of youth and you will never find a magical solution for flat abs. There are no short cuts. It takes a change in lifestyle to get a change in health, physique and performance. That includes nutrition AND training.
There’s No Such Thing As “Stomach Exercises”
Proper choice of exercise is a critical factor in your quest for a firm and flat waistline. But you will never get a great “stomach” from ANY “stomach exercise” because your stomach is a part of your digestive tract, not your skeletal muscular system! So let’s get the terminology straight, shall we?
The area of you body you really want to improve is called your “core region.” Many people refer to it as the “abdominal region.” However, training only with “ab exercise” is NOT the optimal approach.
THIS is your stomach!
The abdominals only include the front (anterior) side of your body and if the only type of training you do is abdominal training, you may be unwittingly setting yourself up for lower back problems. If you don’t think this is serious, then consider this statistic:
According to the American Chiropractic Association, more than 31 million Americans are suffering from low back pain at any given time.
So would you like to trade great abs for a bad back?
I didn’t think so. The good news is that you can kill two birds with one stone. You can develop great abdominal muscles, great core muscles and a strong, pain-free back by using exercises that focus not on the “stomach,” (which is not a muscle you train at all), not on the “abdominals,” (which is only part of the muscles you need to target), but on the entire core.
The core is the key to your success.
The core is the entire complex of muscles around your hip and waist region from your lower rib cage to the bottom of your pelvis. If you just focus on “abdominal exercises” alone (or “stomach” exercises, LOL), you will develop what I refer to as a “one dimensional body.” I focus on training the body as a whole, or “multi-dimensional training” to develop a complete person and to develop effective and powerful athletes.
What every program I write has in common is that I do not attempt to “isolate” the abdominals (or train the “stomach muscles!”) It’s all about the core and about integrating your body as a unit so you function better in daily life.
As you do core-focused exercise programs you not only train your muscular system but also the system that drives your muscular system – that is, the nervous system. This may very well be the most important secret for getting better results in your workout programs.
The more efficiently your nervous system works, the better your results will be. Core workouts that improve both muscular strength and conditioning while also improving neural drive will develop stronger neural control of the associated muscles.
This type of training for your core may very well be the most important secret for getting better results in your workout programs.
THIS is why my “brand” of core training gets results inwomen who have had C-sections, or other abdominal surgeries when nothing else worked
THIS is why the core exercises I recommend will flatten out a “pooching” belly, which is a result of deep muscular weakness and lack of neuromuscular control (It’s NOT just a body fat problem!)
THIS is why my clients have overcome agonizing lower back pain when all else failed
THIS is why my workout program have helped men and women recover from embarrassing incontinence
THIS is how I have helped hundreds of new moms regain their flat and firm midsections after having their babies
THIS is why my clients remain injury free, while so many other training programs are actually the CAUSE of injuries
And THIS is why my type of training – PROGRESSIVE CORE TRAINING – develops amazing athletes – top wrestlers, PGA golfers, and pro boxers with powerful punches and abs of steel.
The purpose of this article was not to give more workout routines (I’ve written an entire book about core training that’s FULL of workouts (Firm And Flatten Your Abs).
The purpose of this article was to “install” 3 incredibly important lessons into your brain:
You can’t train your “stomach” because your stomach is an internal organ of digestion not a skeletal muscle!
You can’t totally “isolate” your abdominals because your abdominals do not work in isolation, they work in conjunction with the rest of your body (and “isolation” as with only doing crunches, is not the optimal approach anyway).
You get more by training your core! You become a better athlete, you help prevent injuries, you get stronger and you get that coveted 6-pack abs look.
I hope the “morals” of these lessons have already sunk in and will become a part of your own fitness philosophy… and the next time you hear someone talk about “stomach exercises”, you’ll now be able to get a good chuckle out of that.
About the Author:
David Grisaffi majored in physical education and holds multiple certifications including 3 from the prestigious CHEK Institute: Level II high Performance Exercise Kinesiologist, Golf Biomechanic, and health and lifestyle counselor. He’s also certified by the ISSA as a personal trainer and specialist in performance nutrition. David has been a high school wrestling and baseball coach and is currently an independent trainer and strength coach. He has been sought after by some of the top athletes in professional sports including world champion boxer Greg Haugen and professional golfer Michael Putnam. David’s ebook, Firm And Flatten Your Abs is an online best seller which teaches you how develop “six pack abs” while improving strength, function and athletic power at the same time. Find out more at: Firm And Flatten Your Abs website
(Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Jon Benson)
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You may be wasting your time in the gym or at home if you are trying to shape your body or get rid of body fat.
Most people are. That is when it comes to exercise for getting rid of belly fat and getting into better shape.
I was in the gym today (nothing new… ; ) and I saw all 4 of these exercises being performed by various gym members (again… nothing new.)
And they are useless for 99% of the people on the planet.
Here they are…
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USELESS EXERCISE 1: Walking Dumbbell Lunges
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Okay ladies, this one is for you… although I see guys do this exercise as well.
This is where you take a pair of dumbbells and kneel with one leg, then the other, and so-on, walking around the gym as you go.
The idea behind this exercise is to work the butt, and to some extent the thighs… but it’s a joke. It’s something invented by trainers who should know better.
If you want to build and tone your butt, exercise one leg at a time. Lunges are a great exercise for this, but save your energy. Do them on a Smith Machine or with a barbell. Work one leg at a time, too. Do not alternate legs. This just wears you out aerobically before it has a chance to get to your glutes.
Here’s how I perform lunges: On a Smith Machine, with pretty heavy weights… one leg at a time. I will do 2-3 sets, or do them in my 7 Minute Body-style workout fashion. I will finish one leg (and one butt cheek) before moving to the other leg.
Why? Again, to focus on the muscle more intensely and to avoid turning a leg/butt workout into a cardio session.
Jon Benson covers exactly how to work the butt area for the best results in 7 Minute Body and 7 Minute Muscle, found right here —– > 7 Minute Body & 7 Minute Muscle
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USELESS EXERCISE 2: The Sit-up
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I’m shocked that people still think sit-ups done the old-fashioned way actually work the abs. Even worse, most people have been fooled into believing this actually helps get rid of bellyfat.
Nonsense. Belly fat is burned off when you have a good nutrition plan and through general exercise, not using exercises for the abs. Ab exercises are fine, but guess what?
I never train my abs more than 3-5 minutes. Today my ab workout took 3 minutes and 12 seconds to complete. And my abs are sore!
But without the nutrition plan, forget it… I’d never SEE my abs at all. I’d just have a nice wall of muscle with a bunch of flab covering it up.
The best nutrition plan for abs is The Every Other Day Diet plan, found here:
The best exercises to do for the actual ab muscles are hanging leg raises, done slowly, crunches (if you do them right)… and that’s really all you need.
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USELESS EXERCISE 3: The Bench Press
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I’m going to get a lot of flack from the guys out there who love to bench, but I’m here to tell you that this exercise for bodyshaping is all but worthless.
Why? Because most people are not built right body-wise to bench press on a flat bench with a barbell. I am not, that’s for sure.
Bench presses work if you have short arms, a relatively short torso, and your shoulders are genetically strong.
Protect your shoulders and really work your chest by doing incline dumbbell presses with your palms facing OUT, not in toward your head. This protects the rotator cuff, a part of the shoulder that is often injured using barbell bench presses.
Combine this with a good cable fly or press movement and you’re set. Again, you only need about 7-14 minutes of chest work tops to get the job done.
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USELESS EXERCISE 4: Most Cardio Exercises
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Yep… saved the best for last.
Here’s a fact: Most cardio (bike, treadmill, glider, whatever) is a waste to time… UNLESS you do it at the right time with the right nutrition plan.
The calories you burn from cardio will be easily negated simply by eating a bagel! Hardly effective for getting rid of bodyfat. Weight training and/or resistance training at home or with your body weight, as covered in 7 Minute Muscle, is your best bet for exercise that burns-off mega-calories and keeps on burning long after the exercise session is over.
Here’s how to use traditional cardio wisely:
1. Do it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach;
2. Keep your heart rate down to 75% of your max (220 minus your age x .75 will give you this number, at least approximately);
3. “Burst” for 2-3 minutes in your session up to 85-90% of your max heart rate.
4. OR, do cardio right after weight or resistance training when your heart rate is already elevated and your blood sugar is lower. Your body burns blood sugar first during exercise.
Cardio for most people only needs to be performed 3-4 times a week for 20 minutes. The only time I break this rule is when I want to get my body fat below 10%. Then I will do more, but only using the rules above.
Hope this saves you a ton of time with your workouts.
You can get both books, The Every Other Day Diet plan and 7 Minute Body, for a big-time discount by going here and watching this presentation:Click here —– > The Every Other Day Diet
Most people are especially challenged with hitting their LOWER ABS.
Don’t worry - this will do the trick…
Find yourself a DECLINE BENCH and a bath-sized TOWEL.
Roll the towel up into about a cylinder, about 6 inches high.
Lay on the decline bench with your head toward the top and your legs straight with feet on the floor.
Place the towel from left to right under your lower back and grab the bench behind your head with both hands to gain leverage.
The towel increases the range of motion in your abs and ALSO gives you incredible lower ab activation.
Now, keeping your legs STRAIGHT, raise them in the air until you’re in the shape of a “V” and breathe out forcefully at the peak contraction point.
Lower your legs SLOWLY but don’t give them a break at the bottom.
Raise them back up in the air and continue back and forth until exhaustion.
When you’re abs are toast, finish them off by bending your legs at the knees and doing “reverse crunches” in the same fashion, bringing your knees up toward your chest.
Want even MORE “abs advice” + advanced training tips for EVERY MUSCLE?
Men’s Health magazine Medicine Ball Ab Workout Challenge from the December 2008 issue:
Modified version of the original Medicine Ball Ab Workout Challenge for people with bad backs (exclude sit ups and crunches):
These are some tough medicine ball exercises for your abs!!!
Personally, I love stability and medicine ball exercises as they are very effective for developing sexy abs, strengthening the core and training stabilizer muscles. I no longer do crunches and sit ups on the floor… don’t wanna cause more damage to my poor back.For more medicine ball workouts and ab exercises, pls visit: Turbulence Training
and Turbulence Training For Abs
Stability ball, also known as swiss ball, fitball, exercise ball or fitness ball, is one simple piece of equipment to have when training abs. (Stability ball is the only fitness equipment that I know has so many names!)
No abdominal machines or gadgets work as effective and safe as a stability ball. Here’s why…
When you sit in a machine, it stabilizes your body and your stabilizer muscles are not called into action. Not training your body to integrate other muscles to work together with the abdominal and deep core muscles creates strength imbalances and leads to injuries over the long term.
The benefits of training with stability ball include:
1. enhances balance, stability and control of deep muscles.
There are deep abdominal and back muscles that work as stabilizers for entire body. These muscles work together to protect spine and help with daily activities eg: lifting, throwing, bending, reaching, etc. When training with a swiss ball, the nature and instability improves centre of balance and activate stabilizer muscles. Unconditioned stabilizer muscles can lead to injury.
2. improves posture and support around joints.
Training with stability ball involves full range of motion and recruits additional muscle groups to maintain proper form. As the ball moves freely, it creates a wider range of motion for working the joints and keeping them flexible.
3 . greater muscle strength and endurance.
I’ve been training with stability ball for several years, and teach fitball classes twice a week. It’s an excellent piece of fitness equipment that I can’t live without. A simple ball indeed, but with many uses. It can be used not only for abdominal workout, but also total body workout.
In Firm & Flatten Your Abs, David Grisaffi explains the importance of core training. A complete abdominal training should not only focus on working superficial muscles (that gives the six-pack appearance), it must also strengthen and develop the underlying muscles. Strengthening the hidden muscles is crucial to preventing injury and improving physical performance. A core training program decreases the likelihood of back pain, neck pain, incontinence, ruptured disks, torn muscles and strained ligaments.
Your abdominal workout is not limited to crunches, sit ups and leg raises only. There are hundreds of exercises you can do for the core and abdominals. You don’t need fancy gym equipment. Most of the ab exercises in Firm & Flatten Your Abs can be done at home with a stability ball and bench only. A few of the abdominal exercises require cable apparatus which can be replaced with a light dumbbell.
I love Fridays ‘cos it means the weekend is here. Time to chill out, clean my house, meet up with my buddies or doing nothing at all
This morning, I did the 6-minute ab supersets by Craig Ballantyne (watch how he does it in the video below) after my weight training.
There are 4 abdominal exercises and 2 supersets.
1st superset:
Exercise 1: side plank
Exercise 2: stability ball roll out
2nd superset:
Exercise 3: Bird dog
Exercise 4: Cross body mountain climber
Each superset is performed twice with 30 seconds rest after completing 2 exercises. The 2 supersets are done within 6 minutes.
Personally, I find crunch free abdominal exercises are very effective for conditioning my abs. In the past, I used to do lots of crunches and sit ups on the floor but with minimal results.
In Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training For Abs program, he offers superb crunch free belly fat burning workouts using bodyweight abs exercises and interval training to lose stomach fat, burn calories and get 6-pack abs.
The following article by Craig Ballantyne explains how to work your abs more effectively by combining explosive and static ab exercises.
I perform the medicine ball slam as part of my explosive ab workout. Here’s how I do it:
1. Start position: Hold medicine ball with your arms extended overhead.
2. In one continuous motion, bring the ball down in front of you like you are chopping wood.
3. You will have to bend at your knees (or squat) to complete this.
4. Drive the ball up to starting position and repeat.
The difference between this ab exercise and the one described by Craig below is that I don’t move my legs. My feet are shoulder-width (or slightly more) apart. These 2 variations of medicine ball slam are equally effective.
Try it out yourself!
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A new research study showed that doing ab exercises “faster” (aka explosively) lead to more work done by the ab muscles.
Here’s what you need to know about this study, and why this info is both good and bad.
First of all, there are two ways to increase the amount of muscle used in any movement. One is to increase the resistance, and the second is to increase the velocity.
Both require more muscle fibers to produce force, and more importantly, recruit your fast twitch muscles. However, while this is an interesting report about the abs, we have to be careful not to take it to extremes.
First, explosive movements cause more muscle damage, and that means more muscle soreness.
Second, you can’t talk about the abs without talking about the low-back and spine. Your low-back and abs want endurance for health and safety, but we want maximum abdominal recruitment for six pack abs.
So here’s the best way to keep everyone happy…
a) do only one explosive ab movement per workout
b) do at least one ab endurance exercise per workout
-> Medicine ball slams
-> Sledgehammer swings
-> Kettlebell swings
-> Sandbag swings
-> Band pulldowns
A medicine ball slam is just like an angry soccer throw in.
Hold the ball at waist height, step forward with one leg while raising the ball overhead (stretching your abs), as you plant your foot, reverse your arm direction and contract your abs and drive the medicine ball into the ground. Pick the ball up and repeat for 6 reps.
After you’ve done your explosive ab exercise, you can do something like a plank, side plank, or plank with your arms on the ball for your abdominal endurance exercise.
That will help you work more of your abs while supporting your “core” muscles - plus you don’t have to suffer the dishonor of crunches.
About the Author
Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training For Abs workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training For Abs website.
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