Ask the Experts - Strength and Conditioning

Answers from Danny M O'Dell:

Q.Dear Sir, I have got fat around my chest and under the arm, what sort of exercise would help me to get rid of it.

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Answer:

Summary: The best way to lose the fat is to lose the fat.

It is NOT possible to spot reduce contrary to what you may be seeing on the TV. Start a daily food and drink diary. Enter every thing that goes into you mouth for at least a week. Write down all of the consumed food and drink, the time you had it and what you were doing before the urge to eat hit. You will soon begin to see a pattern to your eating habits.

Notice what these items are and when and where your calories are coming from so you can make adjustments in your eating and drinking. Diets generally are not an effective way to lose weight as they are rarely followed for any appreciable length of time. Avoid, at all costs, the starvation mode by eating five to six times a day from a balanced selection of foods. Drink enough to keep your urine a pale yellow.

Your exercise program needs to address the issue of lean muscle mass. Increased resistance training that engages the major muscles of the body is the ticket here. You did not mention your age or gender so this is a shot in the dark as far as this part is concerned.

Utilizing compound exercises (squats, military presses, bench presses and dead lifts to name but a few) activates the major muscle groups. This in turn releases significant amounts of testosterone and growth hormones into your body if you are a young man of 16- 26 or so; less if you are much older. This speeds up your metabolism and changes the composition of the tissues leading to more lean muscle mass. If you insist on targeting the chest and arms then do incline, flat and decline bench presses, followed by triceps extensions or push downs followed up with the barbell rows.

You don’t have to spend hours and hours working out. Forty five to fifty five minutes maximum. In short, get into the session, do your exercises, cool down and go home to a post workout drink of chocolate milk. This has a very good distribution of carbohydrates, fat and protein, which makes it an ideal after work out replenishment source of calories.