Straight to the Bar

Girlwith Noname.

When I frequent my gym, I never go into the ladies area. I find it just a bit TOO ‘lady-like‘ with its little pink dumbbells and petite machines designed for light lifting, not to mention the ubiquitous and ridiculous ‘hip toner‘ machine.


When I visited my gym a couple of days ago, out of curiousity I wandered through the ladies area just to see if anything had changed in there lately. Sadly, I discovered that nothing has changed since I wandered through there a few years ago. They still have the tiny dumbbells and there was that ‘hip toner‘ machine STILL!!! It is this machine in particular that got me thinking about what strength training / weight training can and cannot do for you, me and everyone else!
That ‘hip toner‘ machine reminds me of a huge misperception out there in the world of fitness that a lot of people have about “Spot Reducing“.
First of all, let me tell you flat out: SPOT REDUCING IS A MYTH! If you have extra fat on your hips, doing a million reps on that ‘hip toner‘ machine will NEVER reduce the fat on your hips. If you have excess flab on your abs, you can do a TRILLION crunches, sit-ups and leg lifts but it will never reduce the fat on your abdominal area. What it WILL do is build up the muscle under the fat in those areas. Therefore, you are actually working towards making an area you are trying to reduce BIGGER!! This is completely counterintuitive to your goal of reduction.