The Ripple Effect

#Fitspo followers, prepare to take it up a level. The hottest body hashtags on Instagram are #fitabs and #situps. Forget skinny: this time we all want sixpacks. Start with a stretch and these secrets from the ab experts.

THE MODELISER
LA-based “body stylist” Nonna Gleyzer (bodybynonna.com) sculpts superbodies Gisele and Stacy Keibler. Her surprising advice: ditch killer crunches. “I don’t like overdoing them — it sends stomach muscles into spasm and can expand a woman’s rib cage so she actually looks wider,” Gleyzer explains. “And they give you short-looking abdominals, not that long definition women want.” Her go-to exercise is the “elephant” move, performed on a Pilates reformer. “I never do a lot of repetitions of any move — it also shortens muscles. I’ll do 10 or 15, have a little break, then switch to a different Pilates exercise.” If doing Pilates on a mat, focus on your back first. “I always have the spine supported by a yoga bolster so when you do ab work the stomach muscles are only responsible for the stomach, not the back. It lifts the intensity without risking injury.”

THE POWER PT
Lesson #1: ripped women work on their abs even when they’re not working their abs. You could do 100 sit-ups a day but your abs won’t show like you want them to unless you get lean doing a cross-section of fat-burning and whole-body training. Get the Tabata started. Basic Tabata interval training is 20 seconds of high intensity on, then 20 seconds off for rest, repeated for a 20- or 45-minute session. Apply it hard to gym circuits of bike, kettle-bells, rower and ab-focused plank, and watch your targeted ab exercises pay off faster.

THE A-LIST’S 40+ COACH
What dark magic is this? Cameron Diaz and Halle Berry are defying the natural order and actually upping their abdominal game after their thirties. Berry’s trainer, Ramona Braganza, swears, “It’s just lean and clean eating like in my 321 Nutrition plan and 321 workouts (ebooks and videos on ramonabraganza.com) and daily training.” The secret? Use everything you can to blowtorch the fat that clings to an over-40 belly like a blubbering toddler. “Spicy foods, known to raise metabolism slightly, burn 10 extra calories. Iced green tea has also been proven to speed up metabolism — Swiss researchers found you burn up to 266 more calories per day, but use real tea bags you’ve steeped rather than bottled options.” In the gym, execute defence strategy. “Try the ‘sprawl’ move. Boxers and martial artists use it to warm up and they have great lean abs,” Braganza says. “Boxing rotation jabs and crosses are not traditional ab exercises but work quicker on obliques [since they recruit more muscle fibres]. These side-muscles give that V-look to lower abs.”

THE NUTRITIONIST
Experts agree: abs are made in the kitchen. And, yes, we’ve got it: cut sugar, alcohol, fat and all processed, calorific carbathons. The next step is to get a handle on hormones, especially when spiking, stress-responsive cortisol interferes with insulin and sets off cravings. Fibre and chromium, fish oil and cinnamon can assist regulation of sugar levels and cravings, which may have a mild effect on abdominal fat loss. Meditative yoga and supplements are also helpful. Oestrogen and progesterone are insulin-sensitising and, when levels are normal, make it less likely for excess calories to store as fat. As oestrogen decreases in our late forties, DHEA supplements may help to regulate it. Also, check your “diet food” isn’t accidentally bloating you. The complex sugar molecules in mushrooms, legumes and lentils, diet drinks or sugar-free gum can cause bloating.

THE SIXPACK SPECIALIST
Ready to get ripped? Lagree method Kim K credits with shrinking back her post-pregnancy midriff. Lagree training is perfect for the superdefined washboards that are trending on women as signs of total fitness, not just slimness in which Pilates-style moves are pulled on a Megaformer machine (Sofia Vergara has one at home). With progressive resistance, we focus on the slow-twitch muscle fibres because they’re the ones responsible for burning fat, stability and endurance rather than size and bulk. We work for a sustained period and very, very slowly so muscles are always in contraction. As for shredding workouts to sculpt your figure  try ‘catfish’ — it engages your core, lats, triceps and shoulders with extreme control. Three sessions a week over two weeks (with rest days in between) turns a stomach that’s flat into nicely stacked. “The ab area is definitely where you see the results of Lagree workouts the quickest.

THE NEW LIPO SUCTION
Abdominal etching, used to literally carve out muscle shape, is the latest incarnation of liposuction and liposculpture. It used to be a body-builder trick, but the trend was spotted emerging among women. The procedure uses the liposuction method to address disproportionate fat pockets in the abdomen and unveil underlying muscles. Ab etching can also fake a muscle shape in fat where there is no six-pack to reveal, but it’s much better designed for toned bellies that just have stubborn fat pockets. It’s not a substitute for diet and exercise, and not everyone will be suitable for the surgery. It can happen under local or general aesthetic and will “probably take two weeks of downtime”.