[REVIEW]: Hip Hop Abs -- Less of a Fatty, Part 2

(Originally written Thursday, May 19, 2011)

One of the greatest canards in the weight-loss-gimmick industry is that you can "spot-tone" an area. You can practically recite the infomercials in your sleep: "OMFG, the 'Ab-cinerator' will melt away my belly-fat & love-handles, giving me the flat, firm, sexy abs I've always wanted!!!" Sorry, your body doesn't work that way. You might be able to build muscle with that methodology, but fat loss is a completely different beast.

When exercising, your body requires energy (duh). Once you deplete what is readily available, your body starts looking to your fat deposits for energy. And it doesn't say, "I'm working out my abs, so I need to use fat from that region!" - that's just ridiculous. Your body has a hard-wired methodology for how it stores fat, and how it later retrieves it for reserve energy. The only way to get rid of belly fat is to reduce your total body fat.

I'm going to say that again:

**The only way to get rid of belly fat is to reduce your total body fat.**

And it makes sense. Have you ever seen anyone with a ripped chest and gelatenous thighs? No, of course not. For the most part if you're chunky somewhere, you're chunky everywhere. Or at least you're chunky enough to not have abs.

Nevertheless, I decided to do an "ab workout" with promises like those above. Why? Because, following Insanity, I wanted something a little lighter, and I had gotten used to Shaun T, so I figured I'd give his "Hip Hop Abs" regimen a try.



Seems legit.

My first concern (besides those voiced above) was that I hate hip hop. Luckily, the videos didn't contain any. The music was an edgy groove more than anything else. The closest thing to hip hop is when Shaun T raps in the beginning of each video. Yes, you read that correctly, Shaun T raps. The first time I experienced it, I had to find a chair so I could fall out of it laughing. By Day 5, the novelty had worn off, and by the end of the four weeks, I couldn't fast-forward through it fast enough.

The second thing I noticed was that Shaun T's character was considerably different from the Shaun T I remembered from Insanity. Surprisingly, he was quite flamboyant and flirty. While his antics are probably of no consequence to female partakers of HHA, I don't know many men who respond well to flirtation as a motivational technique, even from a female instructor. I'm willing to bet that most men respond best to hard encouragement, yelling and testosteral challenge. That's just how Y-chromosomes are programmed.

The more I did HHA, the more gender bias I noticed. The 'cast' was almost entirely female, save for a couple of brain-dead pieces of eye-candy in the back row. Now, I would consider myself very comfortable in my sexuality, and am fully capable of platonically appreciating another man's appearance... but doing HHA, while Shaun T is flirting with me and the brawny, shirtless mouth-breathers are prancing right and left... It more than subtly suggested that I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong workout. Nevertheless, I convinced myself to persist, thinking that if regimen as a whole was challenging and rewarding, I could learn to look past all that nonsense.

This, unfortunately, was not the case.

The workout itself was based around Shaun T's "three 'T's:" Tilt, Tuck & Tighten. They, of course, are in reference to your abs... I'm not quite sure where the 'tilt' comes in, but I guess three of something always make a better slogan, so I can give it a pass. Learning to continually contract and breathe with my abs was the most difficult challenge. Until I finally started getting it (which took about a week) I didn't have very fulfilling workouts.

Hip Hop Abs, as I mentioned earlier, is four weeks long. There are four DVDs with four 30-ish minute-workouts which comprise the core regimen. Also included is a full-fledged dance routine, and a five-minute workout. The first week keeps it simple, featuring just two workouts staggered throughout the week, one per day. As the program goes on, the remaining workouts are folded in, and eventually stacked multiple workouts per day. With only four very similar workouts, HHA gets stale pretty quickly and by the start of the third week, I was already bored.

This is a fairly easy regimen with a difficulty appropriate for absolute beginners and incredibily limited scalability for the more-seasoned. And, guys, so long as you are firm in your masculinity, you can do it too, though the workout is clearly not aimed at you.

By far, the greatest take-away is the core control. It's the hidden gem inside this otherwise bland set of videos and has brought a huge benefit to my later workouts, even beyond HHA. It was also nice to see some of the exercises that became the basis of Insanity's Cardio Abs and Insane Abs routines.

Is it going to shred your mid-section? No. But it will get your feet wet to modest exercise and help you gain control of your core, which is an extremely valuable skill to attain and use in your future fitness endeavors.

-Clive

Less of a Fatty, Part 0 - Insanity (the first time)
Less of a Fatty, Part 1 - Getting Started