What a bunch of hogwash! And people are buying it! Don’t believe me? Just walk into any health club and look around. They’re all doing crunches, push-ups, and pull-ups. Everything’s going up, but nothing’s going down. What I mean is that— nothing’s happening!

Oh they’re all great exercises, all right, and they’re all being done perfectly by the book. But the problem isn’t the kind of exercises they’ve chosen to do, it’s the combination of sets and repetitions they’ve chosen not to do. They think that just continuing to do an exercise like the crunch till you’re a little tired is the way to do it, but any experienced body builder will tell you that's not the way to go.

Now, without getting into the technical aspects of phasic/tonic training, there are some benefits to choosing the proper exercises, of course. But if it wasn’t for the efforts of one great researcher who decided to find out what actually happens to muscles during exercising, we might still be groping around in the dark when it comes to figuring out the training that's really best for muscle tone.

Eminent neurologists and psychiatrists, after studying and teaching the physiology of exercise for over 50 years, have concluded that muscles can be grouped into three different types: postural, tonic and phasic.

Postural tonic muscles are characterized by an absence of motion used primarily for support and tend to shorten when stretched. Phasic muscles are oriented toward movement and tend to weaken. This may sound too simple, but to the muscle-building community, it had great meaning. It answered quite a few “whys.” And it also caused many to question “why.”

The answers to “why are you training your abs?” became very obvious, and the answer, perfectly acceptable: “To see them as a six-pack.” (these days, it’s become an eight-pack) The desire for a trim midsection gave exercisers a goal, a reason, and an end result to shoot for. Nothing technical about it, just a plain, common sense answer, which by the way, should play a role in all of your body-building answers.

Some experts relate everything back to common sense and function. Why would anybody in their right mind want to do 100 crunches? Unless you’re trying to break a record in the Guinness Book of Records, that’s utterly ridiculous! You do know, or should know, that a muscle has to be challenged with resistance, a weight of some kind, in order to grow. So instead of hundreds of air-crunches, go crunch just a few times with a 50-lb plate held on your chest, to really get a workout.

And don’t worry; adding weights to your abs exercises does not cause distended abdomens. That's not generally how those kinds of injuries occur. With a little attention to your body's abilities, you should be pretty safe in adding a little weight to crunches and other exercises. As usual, if you notice any pains or special symptoms, don't hesitate to talk to your doctor.

So whether you’re into Roman Chair, Slant Board or just the standard old crunches, try adding some weight to it. Give it about six weeks, and don’t forget to cut down on your reps. Now, this time, let’s see how few you can do.