A lot of fitness aspirants contact me & ask somewhat similar questions – I want to build 6 pack abs, what exercise should I do & my answer to them is Spot Reduction does not work. Since a lot of people have this misconception about spot reduction, I decided to pen down my thoughts on this.
Spot reduction works on the belief that by performing isolated exercises that target specific muscle groups such as abs, thighs, belly, arms you will lose extra fat on them. The reason a lot of people still believe in the power of spot reduction is that fads & television shows endorse this fact that without spending hours in the gym & without following a diet, you can eliminate the extra fat on these specific muscle groups/target areas.
So what is the problem with spot reduction?
- It prefers working on smaller muscle groups rather than improving overall fitness.
- It does not take into account the role of your diet.
The concept of spot reduction only works when you are already fit, you have little extra fat & you want to strengthen a specific muscle group. If you are fit, you will find benefit in doing a muscle group specific workout since you are defining the muscles that you have already built.
So what is the solution if spot reduction is not going to help?
Total body fitness: Your focus should be on overall holistic fitness. Your body burns fat all over when you workout & does not burn in a specific area where you are training more. This is the reason you should start with doing full body workout using body weight & then slowly increase weights/do weight variation to increase the intensity of workout. For strength training, you should do more compound movements rather than isolated movements. You should indulge in workouts such as quats, deadlifts, pull ups, chest press & lunges that impact multiple muscle groups. By performing these compound exercises, your body will be in a fat burning state & your metabolic rate increases. Another way of burning calories is MRT (which a lot of us call HIIT). This is a high intensity burst of cardio workout with small intervals. So it can consist of 6 to 7 exercises in a circuit with 45 seconds for each exercise & 15 seconds break in between. Usually people do 3 to 4 circuits of these high intensity exercises. Give due consideration to calories & type of foods you consume since this is the most important aspect of our overall fitness. Our body needs food which is used as a fuel to carry out these high intensity &/or compound exercises. If you want to lose fat you need to burn more than you eat. This calorie deficit will ensure that you lose that weight/fat & types of food you consume will make your weight/fat loss easier.
To summarise, spot reduction is not effective when your fitness goal is fat loss. Your focus should be to train your entire body & have a curated nutrition that works for your body. Training plans that focus on higher reps of exercises whether it is compound movement or MRT, help in reducing the overall fat mass but the fat loss will not happen on a specific muscle group but over the entire body.
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