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Local fat reduction - does it make sense to train a specific muscle group?

Tomasz Jankowski

Tomasz Jankowski

2026-03-18
4 min. read
Local fat reduction - does it make sense to train a specific muscle group?
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A key component of a lean, athletic physique is a flat stomach, which both women and men strive for. Women often also wish to get rid of fat on their legs. Are there therefore methods that allow for the burning of fat from specific body regions?

What does logic suggest?

So let's start by thinking about what common sense tells us: the exercise of a given batch forces our body to draw energy from the fat from the surrounding tissues. If we exercise the stomach, the body will be closest to the fat stores around our heels. Unfortunately, this assumption is wrong for a number of reasons.

What do the coaches say?

Just a few years ago, the topic of local fat burning was very popular. You could find dozens of different recipes and methods in magazines that allow you to get a beautiful belly in a few minutes a day. But over time, it turned out that getting silhouettes in the summer starts in the kitchen with a proper diet, and training is just a tool. Over time, more and more attention has been focused on cardio workouts long workours with low or medium intensity. And here too, the assumption has turned out to be so wrong that it's not entirely effective.

What does the research say?

In the talk about fat burning locally, there is no shortage of standard studies in this field that show that this thinking is wrong. In the first of these, led by Ramírez-Campillo, the subjects were asked to squeeze one leg very lightly hundreds of times during training. The effects after 12 weeks of such training were quite surprising. Although they did not change their calorie intake they lost weight! The amount of fat tissue decreased mainly in the upper half of the body, on the body and what can be done with the acid, not like it would be spent in the exercises.

What does experience and observation say?

In the gym, we can see a certain tendency: the more a person wants to lose persistent fat from their belly or legs, the more intense they exercise. Sometimes it's dozens of belly fat, sometimes really long cardio sessions. However, these people don't look for solutions where they should, and so in an incorrect diet, and then, while ignoring the satisfactory effects of this kind of training, they drop out of the gym. This model is mainly found in beginners, but I'm aware that this model is also found outside of the most active body clubs, for example, in home conditions. So I would like to point out that there is a tendency to lose weight while exercising the rest of our body, which means that we can't lose weight by continuously exerting weight while we're on the floor, and we'll probably lose weight because of the lack of exercise in our body. So, if there's a lack of energy in our bodies, we've got to look for a way to improve our body's ability to maintain muscle mass and muscle mass, which, of course, can be done in a way that we
Tomasz Jankowski

Tomasz Jankowski

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