A woman did a quarter million leg raises in a year, and there was no change, not a scintilla. There was no spot reduction of fat deposits from her amply marbled hips. Well, that is just one person, and a sample size of one has no statistical power. Maybe a larger sample size and more accuracy (MRI assessments) would produce a result of statistically significant spot reduction of fat from the area targeted with exercise.
Maybe not, from this article, Targeted Fat Loss: Myth or Reality?, this quote from a study:
“Tennis players constitute a population whose right and left arms have been consistently subjected to very different amounts of exercise over several years. Consequently, if spot reduction were a valid concept, one would expect the players’ dominant arms to have thinner layers of subcutaneous fat compared to their non-dominant arms. When the researchers measured the thickness of subcutaneous fat at specific points along the players’ arms, however, they found no statistically significant difference between right and left arms.”
Fat burned as fuel during exercise or even resting can come from anywhere in your body, not just the part that is being worked the most. You don’t have a say, your genetics do. It is best to choose a form of exercise that burns the most calories and will continue to burn calories long after the exercise session is completed.
Another quote:
“High-intensity interval training (alternating between brief periods of high-intensity and low-intensity exercise) can be particularly effective, due to the phenomenon of after-burn – that is, an increase in resting metabolic rate that occurs for up to 24 hours post-exercise. “
That after-burn is excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption, (EPOC), and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) results in more EPOC than any other form of exercise. HIIT is the type training we do at Austin Personal Training and New Orleans Personal Training.