Lose Belly Fat But Don't Do These Common Exercises! (5 Minute 10 Day Challenge)

hello health champions so many people want to lose belly fat and if that's you you need to watch and understand this video this is a 10-day challenge for five minutes a day to exercise to lose belly fat and obviously this video is going to be a whole lot more than just a five minute exercise video because we want to understand how and why to do these exercises after all why would you even exercise if you don't understand what it is doing for you coming right up hey i'm dr ekberg i'm a holistic doctor and a

former olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything so first of all listen very carefully to this even though i'm a huge proponent of exercise exercise is not going to be the primary way to burn belly fat it can help but it's not the primary way belly fat is a metabolic and hormonal condition and if you have a belly like this top picture and you want to start looking like the lower picture then

crunches alone are not going to do it not in a million years so why am i even making this video on exercise and belly fat and challenging you to do it because there are tremendous benefits from doing it but also because there are so many bad videos out there they're misleading they are wrong and worst of all they're dangerous believe it or not when i started looking at other videos on this topic i found about 10 videos on youtube that had a hundred million views between them and they were all misleading wrong and dangerous so

let's look at why were they misleading because all of them implied or even guaranteed that in just a few minutes a day in very few days you'll get from this to this and that is just plain false it's a straight out lie why are they wrong because half the exercises they're doing anatomically have nothing to do with the belly muscle with the stomach muscle and most importantly why are they dangerous because the people doing them have never been injured in their life they're young and they're fit and they can get away with doing a lot

of exercises that you can't chances are if you have some belly fat looking like the top picture here then you're not 20 years old you're not super fit and doing the exercise is wrong is more likely to injure you and give you back pain than provide any sort of benefit so in this video you're going to learn to do it right you're going to learn why and how to get results and most importantly how not to hurt yourself so first we need just a little bit of anatomy because if we're going to work these muscles

we need to know where they are and where they attach because otherwise it makes no sense but i promise i'm going to keep it simple and you're going to love this the stomach muscle that most people want to work out is called the rectus abdominus it attaches to the sternum or the chest bone and on the lower ribs on the top portion and on the lower portion it attaches to your pubic bone to your pelvis basically and then you also have abdominal oblique muscles that assist with rotation those are the stomach muscles that give you

tone and a flat stomach and the people want to work out and the very first thing to understand about muscles is that muscles can only contract muscles can only get shorter when they work they can't push they can't extend they can't make themselves longer alright so the way to work a muscle is to shorten it and you do that by bringing the two attachment points closer together so if you bring the rib cage the lower ribs closer to your pelvis to your pubic bone you're gonna contract the abdominal muscle and you're gonna work it out

if you don't bring those two points together then you're not really working out the stomach muscle as a chiropractor i have seen literally thousands of patients with low back pain and in most of those patients the cause for their low back pain is that their hip flexor muscles the iliopsoas muscle is too tight and the stomach muscle is not strong enough so the iliopsoas is known as the hip flexor the lower portion attaches on the upper part on the inside of the thigh bone and there's two parts the psoas attaches to the low spine all

the way from l4 to t12 and the lower portion is called iliacus and it attaches on the pelvis so why are we going through this detail because when you activate these muscles when you activate the hip flexor then you're bringing the knee closer to the chest so it's called a hip flexor but when you're bringing the knee up you're also pulling the pelvis forward and you're bringing the low back forward putting a certain stress on it so the stronger the stomach muscle is the better it's going to be able to attach right here on the

pubic bone and counteract that motion but if these muscles if the hip flexors get too strong in relation to the stomach muscle then we have a problem and there's three things that are going to get the hip flexors overly tight and the first thing is to have a sitting job to be sitting eight hours a day have you heard of anyone like that recently and the second thing is driving because when you're driving you're obviously sitting down and in addition to that you're activating your hip flexor by moving your leg from the gas to the

brake back and forth back and forth for however long you're driving so if you're sitting and it's already tight then the driving adds insult to injury and the third way is to do sit-ups or abdominal exercises the wrong way so we're going to take a look at a few clips of these very popular videos on youtube and we're going to talk about what's really going on as you can see in this video she's lifting the leg bringing it closer to the trunk and because the leg is straight its weight acts on a very long lever

and puts a huge load on the hip flexors then when the leg is lowered the back arches because the hip flexor is pulling the low back up and forward the stomach muscles are working passively to resist the arching but it's primarily the hip flexors that are being worked and the more fatigued you get the more strain you put on that low back her second exercise is very similar except now she uses both legs at once which puts an even greater strain on the low back because she doesn't have any ground support and if you remember

what we said about working the abdominal muscles you need to bring the pelvis closer to the chest to work the abdominal muscles and that's just not happening at all so both of these exercises are working the hip flexors which is the last thing you need if you just drove your car home after sitting at a desk for eight hours now you're just adding insults to injury and here is another example of the same thing as you can see the hip flexor is working very hard against gravity but the pelvis is not moving toward the chest

at all so the stomach muscles are working passively but she's primarily overworking the psoas and making it even stronger than the abdominal muscles this example is a little bit different this exercise works both the hip flexors and the abdominals she is mostly working the hip flexors though but there is a moment when she is curling up and her hips come off the floor that she is actually shortening and working the abdominal muscles quite a bit but notice here what happens to her low back when she extends her legs parallel to the floor her back is

arching as a result of the strain on the hip flexors and as she becomes more and more tired she can no longer perform the exercise properly and she starts jerking her body to get her hips up off the floor and then her back arches even more because her stomach muscles can't counteract that motion any longer and this jerking and arching would be an absolute nightmare for anyone with a back problem and in this example she is doing a full sit up which again it works both abdominals and hip flexors but it works hip flexors more

than abdominals and when she's on the floor on her back she arches her back and then she whips her arms forward making the hip flexor pull on the spine in a very abrupt explosive motion when it's already in the arch position and this is very very traumatic for the low back so hopefully that gives you a good idea on what not to do and how to avoid getting hurt but now the next question is does it work and if so how does it work like we said it is mostly a metabolic problem when it comes

to belly fat so these girls have never had a metabolic problem at all so it's really irrelevant for them to burn belly fat what they're doing is toning and getting more fit and that's absolutely a great thing it just doesn't have a whole lot to do with burning belly fat which was the topic of their videos and if you have a significant amount of belly fat then the problem is about 95 metabolic that you need to bring down your levels of insulin and cortisol and you do that by reducing sugar and carbs and by stabilizing

blood sugar and reducing stress but if exercise is only five percent of the solution then why am i doing a video on this at all why am i challenging you to exercise to burn belly fat and the reason is that five percent is still five percent but much much more important is that it has other tremendous benefits for the body that can help indirectly and it's going to help improve your brain and your quality of life everything that you are everything that you know everything that you do is about how healthy your brain is and

in order to keep your brain healthy you need to provide it three things most people kind of understand the first one that's fuel we usually talk about that as glucose or ketones the second one a lot of people get that's oxygen that's why we're breathing but very few people understand that the third component activation is not optional it is absolutely crucial the purpose of the brain is to process information the purpose of a muscle is to shorten and perform work so when you work out in the gym you're making your muscles stronger when you send

signals to the brain you make the brain stronger and where do those signals come from well a lot of people think that you should do crossword puzzles and play bridge and memorize things and that's all good mental exercises will increase the complexity and solidify your neural networks and what's already there but it's not going to do a whole lot to build new tissue and to drive the formation of new circuits in order to build new tissue you need to really juice up the brain you need to really drive in some signals there and that's what

you do with movement movement provides 90 of all the signals that juice up your brain that provides nutrition and keep your brain alive just how important is exercise for the brain how important is movement for the brain well let me put it this way in one sentence things that don't move don't have brains the purpose of the brain is to process and facilitate movement if you don't move don't need a brain so pay really close attention because this is where it gets really exciting how does this then how does exercise and the brain affect fat

burning and fat loss and belly fat well when you're moving then you're activating the whole brain but mostly the frontal lobe and the frontal lobe is mostly inhibitory it mostly turns things off about 80 to 90 percent of what the frontal lobe does is to receive information and then to turn off other functions in the body to stabilize your state and one of the things it turns off is stress and when it does that it reduces cortisol so the stronger your frontal lobe the more power you have in your frontal lobe the better you're going

to be able to turn off stress and reduce cortisol it also turns off anxiety and depression do you know anyone who eats more who has more cravings when they're anxious or depressed right and it also controls impulses so it improves motivation it improves willpower so all of these put together is going to put you in a much better place to control temptations and all of the factors involved with having a good quality life and burning some belly fat and staying strict to your goals now is there anything about these muscles about the stomach and core

muscles that is particularly good for the brain well it turns out there is the core muscles is what stabilizes the spine the spine is the bones but it has muscles around the spine and muscles around the trunk and if you recall that 90 of the signals that stimulate and keep the brain alive originate from movement then most of these signals actually come from the muscles in the spine the spine has so many muscles it has three layers of muscles it has hundreds of muscles if you add them all up and that provides a tremendous amount

of input to the brain so now if you have a strong core musculature if you have very good control of your core and if that core and the spine is flexible now that's going to send a whole lot more signals to the brain on a regular basis just through everyday movements you're going to keep stimulating and firing and juicing up that brain so let's look at some better examples of how to properly strengthen your core in an effective and safe way a plank works the whole core but it does put some stress on the hip

flexors so do it first in your workout while you're fresh make sure you focus on keeping your low back flat and don't sag and arch your back because if you do that if you start sagging and you can't keep your back flat then you could hurt yourself and it's time to take a break next exercise is called an abdominal brace so you start laying on your back you put your feet flat and your knees up and if you relax your back you'll notice that probably be a little gap under your lumbar spine under your low

back so first thing you do is you push your back flat down on the ground so your whole spine contacts the ground and then you tighten up your abdominals and you increase the pressure downward as if there was a scale there and you're trying to put some pressure on it so you start with your back flat you tighten up your abs and you press your low back down against the surface and you hold it for about 15 seconds you can increase the pressure as you get more familiar and more fit now one place not to

do this is in a bed because it's too soft and it won't give you the proper support and stability so do 10 15 seconds at a time rest a little bit and repeat two or three times this is a simple exercise but it really isolates the stomach muscles well you start with your back flat again and then slowly slide your hands up on your thighs toward your knees and of course you want to do this as a slow continuous motion without any jerking and also notice if you recall how we talked about the muscle shortening

notice the ribcage is coming closer to the pelvis without putting any strain on the low back or the hip flexor it's going to feel pretty easy in the beginning but you'll sure feel the burn if you keep going so try to do about 20 to 30 repetitions this is a diagonal crunch we bring the elbow up to the opposite knee so we're bringing the rib cage closer to the pelvis and we're getting a very good isolation of the stomach musculature and we're also bringing in the oblique stomach muscles because we have some rotation to the

motion it may look like this is also involving the hip flexor because we're bringing the knee up but there is no load on the hip flexor it's not working against gravity so it's a very gentle activation of the hip flexor of course we're also making sure that the back is flat against the surface and that we're performing smooth and controlled movements now we add in some lateral flexion or some bending to the side again we start with the back flat and then simply reach down and touch the heel on the same side this motion provides

some really good signals for the brain and it helps restore range of motion to keep your spine flexible especially if you've had some back trouble before it's a good way to gently get back into it now this next one may look easy but i assure you it is one of the toughest ones that you can do but even so it's a very safe exercise and it works and isolates the lower abdominals so you start out with your back flat then you put your knees at a 90 degree angle and you lift them straight up toward

the ceiling if it isn't moving at all in the beginning don't worry you may have to work up to this one and also make sure that you don't compensate for lack of strength with trying to jerk or jump into the motion so if it's not moving at all don't worry about it it's still a good exercise just contracting these muscles and making the attempt is still very beneficial but if you do want to get some motion in there you can make it easier there's an easier version if you curl up just a little bit and

bring the knees closer to your chest then you can do it with a little more ease but make sure to keep the movements slow and smooth now let me introduce you to the game changer even though it's not an abdominal exercise this one might be the most important exercise you could do to burn belly fat like we said belly fat is a metabolic problem and you reduce insulin by reducing sugar and carbs but you can also increase growth hormone because growth hormone is a fat burning hormone you do a short workout a few minutes and

then the hormone stays on for days burning fat for you and the two ways to produce growth hormone is fasting and high intensity interval training here's an example of how to do it i'm starting out with a heart rate of 74 and then i start pedaling as hard as i can this is pretty heavy resistance i go for about 15 seconds my heart rate is now 128 i get back on the bike and now it's 140 i keep alternating 15 second rest 15 second biking my heart rate goes up every time now it's 148 149

back on the bike and now we're over 150 let's see if i rest can i can push it a little higher again so i go 15 seconds we get up to 155 so i can typically get my heart rate up to about 170 but on a bike it is more difficult it's still a great workout though but on this workout i didn't manage to get it higher than 157 but it took me a couple of minutes and made some really good growth hormone so here's my challenge to you you start today and you pick four

five six exercises pick the favorites that you're comfortable with that won't hurt you you try them out and then you do them for about one minute each you can do that and then you keep it up for 10 days and every three to five days so two to three times during this 10 day period you throw in a high intensity interval training workout and you can do it on the bike just like i did or if you're fit and healthy and you don't have any injuries you can do it running up hills or running stairs

or doing jumping jacks or anything like that anything that works to get your heart rate up is fine the bike is a very safe way to do it because you can hold on and there's no pounding involved when you do the hit you can do it in addition or instead of the abdominal exercises your choice if you want to take a break and get some rest from the abdominals that's fine if you feel good enough to do both on one day that's great but don't do more than two or three times in this 10-day period

and i'm not going to guarantee that you'll have a flat belly in 10 days but i will guarantee that it is a great way to get on a new habit and incorporate some exercise into your life if you enjoyed this video i think you're really gonna love that one next thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time