Question: I’ve been following your HIT workout program and lost a lot of fat on my arms, shoulders, and legs but I still have some fat to lose on my abdomen and lower back. Should I add more abdominal exercises? Should I start doing high intensity interval training on my off days to burn more fat? Are there any supplements that help?
Answer: No, no, and not much. If you’re already losing fat elsewhere you are already doing what is necessary to lose your abdominal fat, it just takes longer. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is the fat in some areas is different than the fat in others. So called “stubborn” fat has less blood flow and has more of the receptors for hormones causing fat to be stored (alpha 2 receptors) and less of the receptors for hormones causing fat to be released (alpha 1 and beta receptors). Because of this, when your body draws on its fat stores for energy it takes less of it from these areas. The second reason is how fast you can lose fat is inversely proportional to how much fat you have. Although this limit probably varies considerably between individuals and would be affected by strength training and differences in diet, the average appears to be around thirty one kilocalories per pound of fat per day (Alpert SS. A limit on the energy transfer rate from the human fat store in hypophagia. J Theor Biol. 2005 Mar 7;233(1):1-13.). This means the less fat you have, the slower it will come off.
This means “stubborn” fat comes off more slowly on average, and since the less fat you have the slower it comes off it takes significantly longer to lose than the more “compliant” fat in other areas. To make matters worse, as you become leaner and muscle groups in other areas become better defined the contrast can make the “stubborn” areas more noticeable.
When discussing this with clients I often compare it to filling and emptying a swimming pool. Your “stubborn” fat is like the deep end of the pool, and your “compliant” fat is like the shallow end. When you fill the pool the water accumulates in the deep end first and the shallow end last. When you drain the pool the water leaves the shallow end first and the deep end last. If you want to empty out the deep end you’ve got to drain all the water. If you want to reduce the fat in “stubborn” areas, you’ve got to reduce your overall body fat significantly.
While it is possible to increase fat loss in specific body areas by exercising the underlying muscles, the difference is so incredibly small it’s not worth it (Are blood flow and lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue influenced by contractions in adjacent muscles in humans? Bente Stallknecht , Flemming Dela , Jørn Wulff Helge. American Journal of Physiology – Endocrinology and Metabolism Published 1 February 2007 Vol. 292 no. 2, E394-E399 DOI: 10.1152/ajpendo.00215.2006). Trying to target “stubborn” fat with exercise is like trying to empty water from the deep end of the pool faster than the shallow end by bailing the deep end with a teaspoon.
What abdominal exercises can do is increase the strength and thickness of the abdominal muscles making them look more defined when your body fat is low enough, and they should be done for this purpose. However, you do not need to train your abdominal long or frequently as is often recommended. Like other muscle groups, if you train your abdominal muscles with a high level of intensity very little volume and frequency is required.
Performing high intensity interval training on off days not only won’t help, it can actually hurt you if you area already relatively lean. As I mentioned earlier, how fast you can lose fat is inversely proportional to the amount of fat you have. The leaner you get, the less energy you can get from your fat stores. If your calorie deficit exceeds the energy you are able to get from your fat stores the difference is going to come from glycogen, then your lean body mass. You don’t need a bigger calorie deficit as you become leaner, you need a smaller one. You can not force your body to lose fat faster by increasing activity, but you can cause yourself to lose muscle if you do too much. Accept that fat loss slows down as you get leaner, and it will take you much longer to lose the last ten pounds of fat than it took you to lose the first ten. I explain this in detail along with how to determine your starting calorie intake and adjust it for maximum fat loss in Getting Ripped.
A few supplements have been shown to help with fat loss in general, ephedrine, caffeine, DHEA, etc., and yohimbine HCL in particular may help you to lose “stubborn” fat because it blocks activation of the alpha receptors. Some people “stack” caffeine, ephedrine, and yohimbine, however I do not recommend taking ephedrine and yohimbine simultaneously, especially if you have any heart problems.
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Hey Drew,
Just wanted to share that I brought this up to my current trainer. I am 37 years old with less then 21% body fat. Genetically I do not have a long torso and my stubborn fat resides in my abdomen. My trainer said this to me: First of all you cannot spot reduce, and second you are still in your child bearing years. He pointed out that I am fighting years of evolution and my own genetic make up! In order to get a flatter stomach I would be risking becoming unhealthy. So what is my goal? To be as healthy as I possibly can be or to have a “six pack”? I show definition in my arms and legs, my clothes fit great and I am strong. That is what is important. It made me stop and think! Ask yourself why you are training and if it is only to look like someone else you may risk becoming unhealthy trying to achieve that goal. I also wanted to touch on what you said about other areas becoming leaner and making your trouble spots more noticeable. I have often thought, well if I got a boob job my stomach would look much flatter! – just saying!
Hey Nicole,
Good points. I think it’s important for people to realize that in the long term their health and longevity are more important than physical appearances. Although physical appearances do have a significant effect on our life, particularly in how we see ourselves and how others see and treat us, as body composition improves you quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. For women in particular, being too lean can be a turn off for many men. Being strong and well conditioned and having a healthy body composition and a good waist to hip ratio is a reasonable, achievable, and safe goal for most women. Looking like NPC and IFBB female fitness competitors or bodybuilders (who almost all use physique enhancing drugs) is not.
Very inspiring info for those of us trying to reach a goal fat percentage. I am 5’10 188 lbs and roughly 17%, aiming for 10%.
I am currently following your protocol for training and calories to turn this skinny fat former (slow) marathon running body into a better defined more muscular body.
Thanks Drew
Hey Richard,
You’re very welcome, and please let me know how you’re progressing with the program.
Hi Drew!
Let’s say that there is a person who wants to train for power, like powerlifting/weightlifter, but he wants to use HIT as “tool”. So, when we “leave out” the genetic factors etc. (optimal rep range varies etc.), is there a basic guideline to use HIT for “only” strength gains? I mean, if a person wants to raise 1RM in bench press for example. How low should you go with reps, and should you use different cadence, like negative emphasized reps or rest-pause?
I know this is kinda stupid question, considering that a specific amount of reps for someone is not optimal for someone else etc. But is there any guideline? How low would you go with reps?
I was reading your older posts about this, but didn’t quite find the exact answer. I hope you can help!
Hey Chief,
Power is work per time. To perform more work per time you have to move faster. To move faster you have to be able to produce more force. To be able to produce more force you have to become stronger. Focus on becoming as strong as possible and you will be as powerful as possible in general. If you want to improve your ability to perform a specific movement or exercise more powerfully, like a squat, bench, deadlift, snatch, clean and jerk, etc., you need so also learn and practice the proper performance of the movement for that purpose. I suggest reading my interview with Doug Holland, a HIT instructor and competitive powerlifter: High Intensity Training For Powerlifting: An Interview With Doug Holland
Thanks for the answer!
Well my situation now is to start training again, after 3+ month break, because I had problems with sleeping and thus working out. I’m pretty sure I was overtraining then too, but anyways…
I’ve done couple workouts so far (2015) and everything is going pretty well. I’m using negative emphasized reps with high intensity and pretty low volume, just to make sure I ain’t overtraining and so on. So what comes to my question, there is “only” 3 exercise which I want “master” (be strong); dip, chin-up and squat. Those are my focus points. So doing 3 sec positive and 10 sec negative I end up with around 3-5 reps, and that feels good for me. So I won’t be doing snatches or clean/jerks or anything like that, just pretty basic movements.
And I re-read that Doug Holland article, and thats why I’m asking this. I just want to be strong in those 3 specific movements (in other as well of course!) and doing them with heavier weights and lower reps seems to be better in that sense.
By the way, it feels that I have to lower workout volume and not train as often by using this (low rep negative emphasized) method. Is this normal?
Hey Chief,
A variety of repetition ranges can be effective for building strength in these exercises, and you should experiment with it and find what your body responds best to (I discuss determining optimum rep range in detail in High Intensity Workouts).
Negative emphasized training may feel more fatiguing but, like most things, whether a reduction in volume or frequency is required would depend on individual response.
Drew I love the book- Are your Metabolic Conditioning Workouts better for fat loss than the other workouts in the book?
I lost alot of fat doing Mcguff’s big 5, 90 second to fail, no rest inbtw workout for about a year (then gained alot back on Mark Rippetoe’s starting strength). I think I want to get leaner before bigger.
Hey Bobby,
The metabolic conditioning workouts might be slightly more effective due to the greater number of compound movements, but probably not by much. Keep in mind the purpose of exercise in a fat loss program is not to burn calories, but to maintain lean body mass while fat is lost, and that a greater variety of exercise would be more beneficial for this purpose.
Thanks for this insight Drew.
I know you touched briefly on it, but I’ve also read in Gary Taubes’ books that your body has a predetermined number of fat stores that will not change unless they are removed surgically, so that genetically, some people will have more fat stores in different parts of the body than others. Men may have more around the belly, and women around the hips and thighs, but again it may vary person to person.
So using your pool analogy, the “deep end” can be at either one end of the pool or the other, or right in the middle… each one’s pool is created differently.
Hey Paul,
What he is probably referring to is the difference in the number of subcutaneous fat cells in different body areas. This is also a factor, but if you lean down enough you can get them pretty small, so they don’t need to be removed surgically. In fact, I strongly recommend against surgical fat removal. If a person has fat surgically removed but continues to eat the way they did to get fat to begin with they will just end up storing more fat in other body areas and end up with really weird looking proportions. If they make the appropriate dietary changes they will lose the fat without needing any surgery and not have that problem. It will take longer, of course, but they didn’t gain it all in a day and they shouldn’t expect to lose it in a day either.
Hi Drew, can u explain this a bit more? thanks.
To make matters worse, as you become leaner and muscle groups in other areas become better defined the contrast can make the “stubborn” areas more noticeable.
What do u mean by this?
Hey Oscar,
I mean if the definition of your chest, back, arms, and thighs is improving faster than the definition of your abs the difference becomes more noticeable.
Instead of body areas, imagine we’re talking about people. If five friends all start out at the same body fat percentage and four of them adhere strictly to an effective fat loss program while the fifth half-asses it, as those four lose fat more quickly than the fifth the difference between them becomes more noticeable and the fifth will look fatter by comparison.
I really love this analogy! Its such a great way to explain the process of fat loss to my clients. I always explain this idea early on so they can better understand the process. Although, it’s kind of a hard pill for some folks to swallow, the crowd who overcompensate for overeating by doing excessive and repetitive cardio. They aren’t doing much good for their joints by continuously hammering the jogging and even though they understand this argument, they simply cant stop the cardio and eating bad. Telling someone to stop doing this is like telling an alchoholic to quit drinking, both equally unwelcome pieces of advice.
Also, I really feel like the chronic cardio crowd are undermining their willpower to eat healthy foods by continually pummeling themselves. Once they are done they are starving, and don’t have the extra mental energy to resist bad food and over eating..
Hey Eddie,
I’ve trained a few “cardio” addicts over the years and this is spot on. Most seem to have a difficult time cutting back even when it is obvious they are grossly overtrained and many overeat as a result of the effect on appetite. Those who do cut back on their “cardio” will see a large improvement in their progress and this helps to convince them.
Hi Drew, I would like to have your opinion on the different concept of training aimed at “slimming hormone”.
According to this theory, what makes you lose fat much more than just a “calorie deficit” is the ‘hormone GH; which in turn it is secreted in large amounts when there is much lactic acid in the circulation.
Ergo, in this context, one should exercise aiming at maximum production of GH.
What do you think about this?
Thanks in advance.
Hey Massimo,
While GH plays a role in fat loss and training can have an effect on it, the effect is minor compared to the effect of calorie restriction and food quality on fat loss. If you’re doing high intensity training with limited rest between exercises you’re already accomplishing this anyway.