Do standard push ups, or do them off your knees or on an inclined bench. Another personal trainer fave: When you've built up your strength to be able to do a few push-ups off your toes, place your toes on a BOSU ball or another small exercise ball. This will challenge your balance and work more muscles than regular push-ups.
Photo 8/11
Strengthening exercise No. 3: Squats
These should be body-weighted squats -- no weighted bars or dumbbells necessary. Simply stand with feet hip-width apart, arms at your sides, and sit back as if you were going to sit in a chair. Engage your hamstrings, glutes, and core as you stand back up. You can also mix these standard lunges up with jumping lunges, to vary your routine.
Surprised that ab specific exercises didn't make this list? These three exercises use the largest muscles of the body in order to get everything in shape and to keep your metabolism up throughout the day, which will help burn fat and flatten your belly, says Conrad.
Photo 9/11
Other belly flattening activities
Since you'll do your cardio and strength training moves four days a week, you'll need to find other activities to do on the other two days to really see a difference in your body. Try picking up a new sport. Tennis, kayaking, and swimming are great choices because they'll quickly help slim your middle. And don't think too much about these activities while doing them. The goal is to go out and have fun, so do something you want to do. And no, shopping doesn't count.
Photo 10/11
The flat belly diet tips
Body fat is usually what hinders our ability to have a flat stomach. Doing cardio is one way of burning fat, but paying attention to the amount of food you eat during meals is an even easier way to get amazing abs. Well, it's less grueling anyway.
Eating smaller quantities of food more often during the day should be your general goal, says Conrad. "Eating too much in one sitting interferes with the hormones that burn fat and put on muscle," she says. These hormones are the ones responsible for building lean muscle. By eating five smaller meals a day as opposed to three large ones, you'll "promote muscle gain, help your metabolism stay revved, and shrink your waste line," says Conrad.
Photo 11/11
A sample meal plan
If you're going to put the effort into working out, you must eat better too, says Conrad. Here's an example of a day's worth of ab-friendly meals:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with cinnamon and agave nectar (it's a natural sweetener that won't make your blood sugar spike).
Morning or post-workout snack: Handful of raw cashews or almonds.
Lunch and dinner: Dark leafy greens (broccoli, spinach), veggies (pass on the potatoes), and some lean protein. Don't eat too much protein, though -- it's harder for your body to digest. And remember to keep protein servings to the size of your fist in diameter and as thick as a deck of cards.
Afternoon or evening snack: Veggies and hummus or another handful of raw cashews or almonds.
Wouldn't it be great if the hundreds of gimmicky ab workouts for women like the Ab Rocket and Belly Burner actually did what they claim? That we could get the flawless tummies we see in infomercials without having to do much of anything? Now that would be heaven on earth.
Well, there's good news: "You don't have to do 500 crunches in order to get a great-looking stomach," says celebrity fitness and lifestyle expert Ashley Conrad. But the bad news is there really is no magic ab trick, she says.
Nutrition and cardio are still the king and queen of the perfect-ab kingdom. You must reduce fat around your midsection and do various ab workouts for women in order to have nice-looking tummy. So if that's the case, how many hours must we spend chained to the treadmill in order to get abs we're proud to flaunt in a bikini? And isn't there anything else we can do to speed up the process?
Read on for the answers. This easy-to-follow belly-flattening program created by Conrad will put you on the path to better abs without making you a slave to the gym. Simply implement this cardio and muscle-strengthening routine along with the key nutrition tips and within days you'll start to notice a difference. After a few weeks you'll actually see true transformation. Keep reading to get started �
