First time with Jillian & a common misconception

Yesterday, due to the winter storm warning, crazy amounts of snow, blustery winds and terrible roads, I was unable to drive myself to the gym, so I found what I could on YouTube. This is what I found.

I can, with 100% honesty, say that I had never seen or experienced Jillian Michaels' workouts before, but I did this one (4 rounds instead of two), and it was a great in home workout.

I have done BodyRockTV workouts before, which was great, but I wanted to try something different. Hence, this video. 

I think that it's important to become educated in the many different types of exercises out there, so when you are stuck - literally stuck - at home, you can still give your body SOME sort of exercise.

I like what Jillian says, in her video, about keeping your heart rate up and incorporating cardio into an ab workout, because too many times people think that "crunches" and "doing abs" will get you that flat tummy that you've always wanted. No. This is a common misconception.

Building a strong core/flat belly is not built on sit-ups, crunches, or any other ab targeting workout.

Think about it this way, if you have flub/fat around your mid-section, and let's be honest, there are few people who don't, it's not that you don't have muscle underneath, but strengthening that muscle is only going to enlarge that muscle; therefore, the muscle isn't all that you want to strengthen, you want to burn the fat so that you can SEE the muscle, so you should be doing HITT (high intensity interval training) and other fat burning exercises. 

Burning the fat is what you want, along with strengthening other components to your core: Major core muscles included the pelvic floor muscles, transversus abdominis, multifidus, internal and external obliques, rectus abdominis, erector spinae (sacrospinalis) especially the longissimus thoracis, and the diaphragm. Minor core muscles include the latissimus dorsi, gluteus maximus, and trapezius.

With that noted, you are strengthening your core/your abs when you work many different muscles, not just the target. 

Ok, I'm off of my soapbox and hopefully that made sense; I was just happy to hear Ms. Micheals' spin on working the core. Also, I thought that this workout was great!