Ten Easy Ways to Flatten Your Belly by Melissa Gotthardt

Simple tips for everyday toning 
By Melissa Gotthardt, Prevention

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could watch your belly disappear? Here are ten easy ways that you can flatten your belly every day--from simple tips that you can incorporate into your daily life to belly busting moves that you can do at home. Follow these 10 suggestions and watch your belly disappear.

1. Eat a bowl of raspberries. Packed with fiber, they fight constipation (that can swell your midsection like a balloon). 

2. Drink lots of water. It's filling, calorie-free, and keeps your metabolism running in high gear.

3. Skip the cocktails. Sure, alcohol may be fat-free, but it's loaded with calories. It can also raise your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that helps your belly store fat. (But if you must imbibe, do it with one of these ridiculously healthy summer cocktails.) 

4. Sit up straight. Hunching forward makes your belly look bigger. For a slimming effect that actually trains the stomach-supporting muscles to stay taut, sit with your shoulders back, chin up, and lower back supported against the chair. 

5. Plant a garden. All the bending, lifting, and twisting help shape your middle, and you'll burn about 350 calories an hour.

6. Moving your hips. Hula hooping works on the same calorie burning waist-whittling principle as gardening--but with less dirt.

7. Hit the greens. Ditching the golf cart earns you a walking workout; whacking the ball tones and tightens your midriff.

8. Get a leg up. Crunches with your legs off the floor tone the upper portion of your ab muscles. Lie on your back with your legs propped up on the bed or chair. Curl up slowly, raising your head, shoulders, and upper back off the floor, then slowly lower. Do 10 to 12 repetitions, two to three times a week. 

9. Reverse that crunch. To tighten your tummy from a different angle, lie on the floor with your arms at your sides, feet off the floor, and your legs and knees bent at a 90-degree angle. Contract your abdominals and press your back into the floor, lifting your hips about 2 to 4 inches off the floor. Hold, then lower. Do 10 to 12 repetitions, two or three times a week. (Or, try some of these 6 Surprising Moves for Flatter Abs.)

10. Do crossover crunches. To work the muscles that define your waistline (the obliques), lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Place your right ankle on your left knee and your hands behind your head, elbows pointing out. Lifting your head and upper back off the floor, twist, and bring your left shoulder toward your right knee. Hold, then slowly lower. Do 10 to 12 repetitions, then repeat to the other side. Do two or three times a week.

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Five Reasons You Can't Build Muscle

Building muscle is probably the biggest goal of anyone who steps into a gym. Numerous types of workout programs can help you accomplish this goal, but your success is largely up to you, not the program itself. So, before you blame your workout for lack of results, make sure to correct the following muscle-blocking mistakes.

1. You're Not Eating Enough
Nutrition is arguably the most important variable in building muscle. If your goal is to gain weight through lean muscle growth, you may need to increase your caloric intake.

According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, if you want to build lean muscle, you should consume approximately 10 to 15 percent more calories than you need to sustain your current weight.

If you consume 2,500 calories per day to maintain your weight, you should aim to ingest between 2,750 to 2,875 calories to gain weight. If you don't know how many calories you're currently getting, keep a food journal to track what you eat and drink.

Eat healthy foods like meats, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits.



2. You're Doing the Wrong Exercises

You should always perform the exercises most suitable to your current needs and abilities. Performing an exercise used by the advanced lifter one squat rack over may not be a good idea. You may lack the mobility, stability or motor skills to successfully execute that movement.

If you're an athlete with little experience with resistance training, focus mainly on compound movements—ones that involve multiple joints and muscle groups—to elicit gains in muscularity.

In a 10-week study performed at a Brazilian university, 29 untrained men were divided into two groups. One group performed two upper-body compound exercises, while the other group performed the same compound movements and two single-joint exercises. Both groups increased strength and muscle mass, but the men who also performed single-joint exercises saw no additional gains in muscle size or strength.

So if you're relatively new to strength training, you should focus mostly on multi-joint movements like Squats, Deadlifts, Push-Ups and Chin-Ups to build muscle. Don't waste your time with single-joint exercises like Bicep Curls and Leg Extensions.

And make sure to use weights that challenge you.

According to research, "intensity (i.e., load) ... is arguably the most important exercise variable for stimulating muscle growth."

RELATED: 5 Expert-Tested Ways to Build Muscle Faster

3. Your Form Stinks

Good technique is essential for optimal gains.

Your body doesn't know what muscles are supposed to be engaged during an exercise. If you don't practice sound form, you might not target the desired muscles.

Even if you think you're using proper form, it's important to have a qualified coach or trainer review your technique to ensure you're maximizing your results.

4. You Don't Track Your Progress

Are you writing down the amount of weight you lift each time you train? If not, you should start right away.

Progressive overload, or gradually increasing the resistance, is an effective method to build muscle. If intensity is arguably the most significant variable promoting lean muscle growth, make certain you increase the load as often as possible.

Recording your results after each workout allows you to look back and chart your progress and gains to avoid getting stuck at the same weight for too long.

5. You're Not Resting Enough

Your muscles repair themselves bigger and stronger between workouts. If you don't devote enough time to recovery, this process doesn't play out accordingly to plan, and you continue breaking down your muscles without allowing for growth. Give yourself 48 hours between intense workouts focused on the same muscle group.

And remember, sleep is crucial for muscle growth.

Researchers from Brazil found lack of sleep can contribute to increases in the secretion of cortisol; decreases in the production of testosterone and insulin-like Growth Factor 1; decreases in protein synthesis; and muscle loss. Be sure to get seven to nine hours of sleep every night.



References

Campbell, Bill I., and Marie A. Spano. "NSCA's Guide to Sport and Exercise Nutrition." Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2011. Print.

Dattilo, M., HK Antunes, A. Medeiros, M. Monico Nato, HS Souza, S. Tufik, and MT De Mello. "Sleep and Muscle Recovery: Endocrinological and Molecular Basis for a New and Promising Hypothesis." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Aug. 2011. Web. 08 June 2014.

Gentil, P. "Effect of Adding Single-joint Exercises to a Multi-joint Exercise Resistance-training Program on Strength and Hypertrophy in Untrained Subjects." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 05 June 2014.

Schoenfeld, Brad J. "The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 24 (2010): 2857-872. Web.

This article originally appeared on STACK.com: 5 Reasons You Can't Build Muscle

The Eight Craziest Things People Do to Build Their Muscle

Athletes and gym-goers do whatever it takes to build muscle. Some strategies are super intense and maybe a bit crazy, but effective. Others are simply ridiculous and do nothing except make you look like a fool.

We polled eight strength coaches to hear the craziest or most ridiculous things they’ve heard someone do in order to build muscle. Here’s what they said:

Restricting Blood Flow

Tony Gentilcore: I think the current blood restriction trend that's happening ranks right up there. I'm sure there're a handful of studies out there showcasing its efficacy. But, wrapping elastic rubber bands around your arms to restrict blood flow under the premise that [it] will somehow increase muscle mass is a bit extreme in my opinion. This is the last thing a 150-pound dude needs to be doing to make his arms bigger.

10-Hour Bench Press Session

Mark Roozen: I once had six guys come to me and ask if I could keep the facility open all night. They wanted to do a Bench Press workout where they had to do 10 reps every two minutes—for 10 hours! That equates to 300 sets of 10 reps for a grand total of 3,000 reps. I have no idea where they got this idea from, but that was one of the strangest requests I’ve received. And of course, I said "no."

Consuming 10,000 Calories Per Day

PJ Nestler:  I've been weight training since I was 13 years old, and I've seen and done a lot of crazy things in the quest for muscle mass. But it wasn't until this past year that I worked with a trainer who takes muscle gain to another level. This trainer consistently eats well over 10,000 calories per day, typically in a few giant meals. I have personally witnessed him eating eight half chickens at a BBQ restaurant—with his bare hands. Each day, he eats a full angel food cake along with eight cups of oatmeal mixed with protein powder and peanut butter. He eats 250 pieces of sushi for lunch, causing him to get kicked out of five all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants in the area.

RELATED: 9 Things Elite Strength Coaches Wish They Knee When They Were High School Athletes

Eating Potatoes Between Sets

Nick Tumminello: When I was a teenager, I trained at a Gold's Gym. There was a guy there who was trying to bulk up, so he'd eat potatoes in between sets. Yes, he carried around cold baked potatoes in the gym and took bites between each of his sets.

Training Each Muscle Group Only Once Per Week

Tony Bonvechio: The craziest thing is way more common than you'd think: training each muscle only once per week. Bodybuilding splits where you train chest one day, back the next and so on are ridiculously ineffective for most people. These routines usually require the lifter to smash each muscle group into oblivion with tons of sets and reps to failure and beyond. We now know it's not necessary to completely annihilate a muscle to stimulate hypertrophy, so it makes more sense to stop short of pure exhaustion, eat, rest and train that muscle again a few days later.

Running

Stan Dutton: I really wish that I was making this up, but more than once I've had people tell me that they're going for 3- to 5-mile runs to make their legs stronger. Each time, I asked them if they ever saw a marathon runner before. They look like toothpicks running on chicken nuggets, and certainly are not known for their size.

Upper-Body Exercises Only
Rick Scarpulla: It was around 1992 or 1993. I was training in a local gym and there was a guy who was always doing Bench and biceps. That's all he ever did. To make it worse, he wore tight jeans—while working out. One day I asked him why he never did lower-body work. This was his answer: “I don’t need to do legs because the girls don’t care about that. It’s all about the chest and guns.” To this day, I clearly remember this guy as the biggest moron I ever met in the gym.

Drinking 1 Gallon of Milk Per Day

Rob DeCillis: The craziest thing I’ve heard is people drinking a gallon of milk per day to pack on weight. That does not seem to be a very enjoyable way to build muscle due to bloating and potential stomach issues.

RELATED: The 15 Most Misunderstood Terms in Fitness



This article originally appeared on STACK.com: The 8 Craziest Things People Do to Build Muscle