The Ups and Downs of Tcore

I saw it written once that ab workouts and the theories that drive the latest ab workout inventions blow like the wind.

Today’s concrete science and best way to approach the problem is tomorrow’s has been junk idea. This has always led me to think curiously about whether these new ideas are ever any good in the first place?   It makes you wonder what you can rely upon to train the abdominal muscles.

On the positive there is a lot we do know. We know that simply working abs alone will not give you a great looking mid-section. One of the paramount considerations is you must eat a diet that tends to not increase the amount of fat you store.

This has always meant staying away from processed foods and eating more naturally.

Another consideration is making sure you get proper cardio vascular exercise to burn off excess calories. This is crucial and gets overlooked too often when people are deciding on the worthiness of any ab program.

Amid this context, we have the Tcore ab workout system. Tcore is basically a hard plastic plunger that you push down (think a hand- operated standing bicycle pump in appearance) against varying resistance. 

You sit upright and place the Tcore on your knees and push down. As you push, the abs contract. There are only three different basic exercises. One exercise goes for the oblique muscles, one for the lower abs and one for the upper abs. Under the Tcore method, you only do each exercise for 2 minutes. 

So your workout total time in a day is 6 minutes. By most accounts, the Tcore gives you a hard total mid-section workout in a very short amount of time. There is a high premium placed on simplicity and fast results.

Still, the imperative to eat correctly and get high intensity or moderate cardio does not change.

One of the vexing problems for Tcore is that there have been numerous complaints about the durability of the product. Admittedly, when you look at Tcore, it looks flimsy. 

Amazon.com reviewers mention that they have to replace the bands which account for the resistance and make the workout actual work.  Still other users haven’t had the problem and talk glowingly about the level of ab sculpting they get.