A Powerful Center

A Powerful Center
by Bidz dela Cruz

The center of the human body is the midsection area composed of the midriff (or abdominals) when seen in front and the lower back when seen at the back. In most cases, achieving balance, stability and proportionality requires a good play of the center. And the human body is a good example of this. To achieve optimum balance and stability, the upper body and the lower body should always be proportionate, but most especially, the center of the body should be powerful enough to support the movements of both upper and lower body.

In exercising, it is always a basic rule to strengthen your abs and back first before developing the other body parts. And since there is no such thing as “spot training” where you choose to only workout a particular body part isolating it from the others, this only means that you will still train your whole body part but giving priority and emphasis on your midsection.

Having a poor midsection may mean straining your back after a long and strenuous workout. You would want to avoid that because having too many backaches in life may cause you to have slipped discs, which will lead to your body's deterioration. So while you are young and have the time to exercise, train your midsection hard.

The following are some basic guidelines for starters (meaning those people that are just starting to exercise now):

1)Do not do any abdominal exercises first if you have a big belly. Trim your belly first. If you do abdominal exercises immediately with a fat tummy, it will get hard and stiffened, thus you will have a hard time trimming your belt size.
2)If you have a relatively trimmed belly, do not attempt to do sit-ups immediately, you might not have a powerful midsection yet, and you might just get a number of serious back pains. So what you should do first is to do crunches first. Crunches develops the upper abs with a slight supplementary workout for the middle abs.
3)If you can see that your upper abs is developing already, you can now train your mid abs. Yes, you can do sit-ups now.
4)When you see that you have a good developing mid abs already, then you can start training your lower abs. For starters, this is the hardest part of the abs to train, this requires focus in breathing and endurance of the lower legs. But do not stop training for your upper and middle abs.
5)While you are training your abs, you should also train your lower back. The abs and the back support each other: A good back helps develop good abs, and a good set of abs helps develop a good back.
6)While doing all these, you can also train for your lateral abs to give you the needed strength for your sides and the most admired midsection appearance. For men, a great set of abs is having all the eight packs of abdominal muscles defined.
7)Remember that you can achieve great abs just by doing crunches and sit-ups. I would like to reiterate that “There is no such thing as Spot Training” So do total body workout all the time. Have an exercise program where you get to train all your body parts in at least twice a week.
8)Cardiovascular exercises are the best way to trim your abs.
9)Exercising is just the first half of the story, diet eating is the other half. Exercise with no diet will give you minimal results. So optimize your exercise and diet programs and flaunt those midsection in no time!

*The author is a content provider of skateboarding

If you want to know more skateboarding, fitness, health and the outdoors, visit www.skateboarding.com.mx

*The author is a content provider of skateboarding

If you want to know more skateboarding, fitness, health and the outdoors, visit www.skateboarding.com.mx