When it comes to toning your abdominal muscles, you have many options at your disposal: sit-ups, crunches, ball crunches, leg raises, abdominal machines and even hula hoops. Sit-ups offer a simple approach without the need for any equipment, but hula hooping can spice up your workout with a bit of fun.
Sit-Ups
Sit-ups offer one distinct advantage over many other workouts: you can do them no matter where you are. Whether you want to squeeze in some quick exercise in the office or kill time between classes, sit-ups offer a quick and effective abdominal workout. If done in quick succession, sit-ups can offer cardiovascular benefits as well as muscle-building benefits. In fact, you can burn more than 400 calories per hour.
Hula Hooping
Hula hooping is first and foremost a cardiovascular exercise, and tones abdominal muscles as an added benefit. By contrast, sit-ups focus on the muscles while offering cardiovascular benefits as a bonus. Hula hooping does have one distinctive advantage over sit-ups. It works the oblique muscles along the sides of your torso, which traditional sit-ups largely ignore. The circular motion helps you to work a wide range of muscles in your midsection.
Which is Better?
If you want to tone your abdominal muscles, you must consider it a two-fold effort. You must burn calories and tone the muscles for best results. As previously outlined, sit-ups and hula hoops can both help you in this regard. The calorie-burning aspect of your workout helps to remove the fat covering up the muscles, and the toning aspect helps to build and define the muscles themselves.
Other Considerations
No abdominal exercise will give you the results you desire if you do not also have good dietary habits. Melting away the fat deposits allows your abdominal muscles to take shape. If you want to achieve definition, use a variety of abdominal exercises. Any exercise will become ineffective if you rely on it exclusively, because your body becomes accustomed to the motions. Varying your workout creates muscle confusion, leading to greater results, so change your routine periodically and implement a variety of different ab exercises, including hula hooping and sit-ups.
References
- Health: The Fun New Belly Blaster
- Yahoo! Sports: Four Fun and Effective Ways to Work Abs and Obliques
- Military.com: The Proper Technique for Curl-Ups
- Body Results: Progressions and Variations for Pullups, Pushups, and Sit Ups
- NutriStrategy: Calories Burned Running, Jogging or in Track and Field Events
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