The abdominals are a small group of muscles that surround your lower torso. So when you think of getting that muscle group fit and in shape, naturally you think of things like sit ups, curls and other muscle related exercises that will put stress on the muscles thus making them more resilient and prone to tone up and grow.

But like any good exercise program, to only focus on a specific muscle group will not only be ineffective, its not healthy for you overall or even for the muscle group being trained. Not only that, if your goal is a washboard stomach that shows off those ab muscles the way you see on the cover of fitness or fashion magazines, you wont get there just using ab muscle exercises, as much as that might make sense logically.

The abdominal muscles do not exist in a stand alone mode any more than anything in our body works without the help of everything else in our body. So to achieve true abdominal fitness, you will need to strengthen the back muscles, the upper body, the buttocks and the legs as well as all of these muscles work together for the carrying of a load.

Let's be clear that there is no real distinction from a fitness point of view between looking good and being strong and healthy. You may not be looking for washboard abs in order to be more powerful for lifting or doing physical labor. But the body is a work performing unit, and if you build the abdominal muscles along with the rest of your body, it will get stronger and more able to perform work, which means lifting and carrying.

A balanced abdominal development program focuses as much on weight loss and reduction of fat content around the middle as much as it does on strength training from the inside out. Along with diet, an aggressive cardiovascular program is just the thing for reducing fat and giving you overall muscle tone.

The body does not lose weight in only one area of the body. So if part of your program to tone up and tighten your abdominal area is to lose fat around the middle, diet and running or some other cardio program cannot be focused just on the abdominals.

But as you put time and energy into your cardio program, you will feel tightness in your stomach and other abdominal muscle groups. That is because the typical cardio exercises of running, bicycling or swimming utilize every muscle group in the body. So as you add these types of exercises to your abdominal weight training, you are adding high impact focused work to the general body workout that your cardio program is giving you.

If you are disciplined and diligent about this kind of program and sustain it over a period of months, you will see the weight come off and the fat content of your body change. You may feel discouraged when you see the fat come out of your face, neck or other parts of your body first. But by sticking with it, that belly will go down and finally get to the trim and tight condition you want for it.

The extra work you had to do to get to this point should add to your sense of pride when you have achieved the washboard abs you wanted. And it should put some emphasis on continuing to maintain your good health week after week and month after month so you don't have to go back and do it all again.