Flat Abdominal Exercises Interview Series with: Craig Ballantyne -- author of Home Abdominal Workouts & Turbulence Training

Recently, I had a chance to catch up with Craig Ballantyne for an interview. His fat loss advice and workout tips are featured in several of the largest health & fitness magazines. He has an extensive research background in fitness and wrote one of the most popular body weight workout manual online, Turbulence Training. And his latest workout program is Home Abdominal Workouts for Six Pack Abs.

Matt Taylor: Craig, what do you eat at the start of the day?

Craig Ballantyne: Sometimes I will start the day with a bowl of blueberries and pecans with perhaps a little natural peanut butter stirred in. I'll then follow that up an hour or so later with a 3-4 Omega-3 egg omelet with 1/2 ounce cheese, and several servings of raw broccoli and peppers, and an apple. Both meals come with 1-2 cups of Green Tea.

Other days I'll have the omelet first and the berries and nuts later, depends on how hungry I am.

Eating raw vegetables first thing in the morning might sound odd, but if you do it for a week or two, it will quickly become habit.

MT: Most folks skip breakfast because as you know... life is really busy sometimes... what tips can you give us for a quick nutritional breakfast-on-the-run?

CB: Grab something high in fiber and with some protein. An apple and an ounce of almonds and a cup of yogurt is a great start. As is any combination of those 3 foods. No reason not to cut up some vegetables the night before and add that to the mix.

Protein shakes are fine too. I don't use them and they aren't necessary in order to have a great body, but they are a convenient source of protein. They just aren't a magic bullet for anything. It's just glorified milk.

MT: How come you don't include steady state cardio workouts in your fat loss program?

CB: Cardio is just not an efficient use of your time.

Interval training has beaten steady-state cardio in the two "head to head" research studies comparing the two, and frankly, interval training works much better in the real world.

And you get done in half the time, which is the other important factor. So even if interval training was only AS good as cardio for fat loss, you'd still be better off choosing interval training because it takes less time.

MT: Conventional thinking says we have to do a whole bunch of sit ups and crunches to get six pack abs. And most of us hate doing sit ups and crunches! How come you don't have these exercises in your workout plans?

CB: Neither of the exercises is necessary to get six pack abs.

Crunches are a huge waste of your time. Such a small movement does little in terms of burning belly fat or sculpting your abs. Every smart trainer knows that if you can do a resistance exercise 50 times in a row, like you can with crunches, that there is little benefit to body composition.

Situps are a more difficult exercise, but like crunches, it is hard on the low back. The spinal flexion, ie. when you round your low back, compresses the discs between your vertebrae and is actually the same mechanism that causes disc herniations. So it's a risky move. Too risky for my tastes.

An advanced replacement for the crunches and sit ups is the "Pull Up with the Knee Up" and an intermediate replacement is the "Stability Ball Rollout."

MT: Thanks Craig. One last question, you write a lot about your Chocolate Lab puppy... is there a Turbulence Training for dogs coming out any time soon?

CB: You know, the sad thing is, my dog actually eats better than 80% of the North American population. Before 9am he's already had more vegetables than probably 50% of North Americans will have ALL day.

So diet for dogs, is just as important as for humans.

As for the workout program, he ate it...

Craig Ballantyne' s puppy, Bally... is he as guilty as he looks? :)

About the Author:

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week.

For more information on Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, please visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com .

Get your fat burning meal plans and crunch free workouts NOW at Home Abdominal Workouts