Ab sculpting

This is a very good question that many people ask.  There a few things to know before considering which exercise or machine if best for sculpting your abs.

1.  To get rid of your "pouch" you will have to burn more calories than you take in (calories deficit).  Unfortunately you can't do a stomach exerice on a machine or otherwise and expect to lose the fat in that area. 

When you do an ab exercise you are simply strengthening your ab muscles and burning calories.  If you are burning more calories than you are taking in you will lose weight but your body decides where it will remove the fat on your body.

2.  There is no perfect machine or exercise to train your entire stomach area. 

My suggestion is to do various stomach exercises that work you outer abdominal wall, your Transverse Abdominus or the muscle you use to draw your belly button to your spine and your oblique muscles or the ones that rotate you and bend you from side to side.

If you visit my fitness training site pages below you can see a video that I speak specifically to this topic:

http://thetraininggenius.com/2009/06/08/saturday-am-rant-n-rave-5-i-got-it-you-want-abs/

I also have a video that will teach you how to activate you core muscles:

http://thetraininggenius.com/perfect-exercise/

Also, below I also created a video to teach you how to do a plank.  It is a great ab exercise and whole body exercise:

http://emailpersonaltraining.com/PerfectExercise/theperfectplank.htm

Last, I have also included a great exercise video that will teach you how to do a stability ball sit up. It is also a great exercise for your abs:

http://emailpersonaltraining.com/PerfectExercise/theperfectstabilityballsitup.htm

If you really want to lose your pouch you will also need to take a close look at your diet.  To get rid of those hard to lose places you have to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, lean meats (if you eat meat) and other non-inflammatory foods.

I hope this helps.

Jason Chiero, CPT