How to Get Great Abs

You ever do an obscene amount of crunches because you know your future six pack will thank you later?

Yeah...

Baby... we need to talk.

It's not me, it's you.

Many misconceptions come with the widespread desire for abs. And first and foremost on the list is that belief that underlies your crunch craze...

Spot training.

What is Spot Training?

Most people do ab workouts because they believe it will burn the fat there. In other words, they work their abs in the hopes of getting rid of belly fat. This is called spot training: the exercising of a specific set of muscles with the belief that it will burn fat in that area.

The most important thing to understand about the pursuit of abs is that spot training is a myth. What this means is:

You don't lose fat on a particular part of your body by working the muscles there.

This means that no matter how many crunches you do in one sitting, if you lose fat, you're going to lose it in small amounts everywhere, not in large amounts in one spot. And there is nothing you can do to make it happen in just one spot.

The good news: When you're losing fat, you're losing it everywhere! (goodbye, jelly arms!)

The bad news: When you're losing fat, you're losing it everywhere :( (goodbye, D cups)

At least now I can pull off this swimsuit.

But ladies, don't freak out! From what I understand, the boob shrinkage shouldn't be TOO drastic. It should be proportional to what your body already looks like (unless you already have an extremely low body fat percentage). Since, you know, it happens everywhere.

So take a breather.

But if spot training doesn't work, what does?

When You Shouldn't Do Ab Workouts

Since ab workouts alone don't get rid of belly fat, if your goal is to lose belly fat or fat anywhere else in your body, it's time to find a different routine.

Some other exercises that will be more useful to you if you're looking to shed fat or gain muscle are the compound exercises: squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, to name a few. These will build your higher surface area muscles and more of them at once, increasing your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and giving you definition in places you can actually see it.

And really, if you want to shed fat, you could focus on things other than exercise anyway. Diet is a huge factor in determining whether someone will gain or lose fat. You need to eat approximately 500 calories less per day than your calculated daily energy expenditure, which depends on your height, weight, muscle mass, and activity level. Check out my articles on how to eat for fat loss (coming soon!) for more details.

When You Should Do Ab Workouts

We've established that you shouldn't do ab workouts with the goal of losing belly fat. However, there are many reasons that ab workouts are awesome:

• Increased core strength

• Balanced overall body strength

• Easier to do other exercises (eg. chin ups)

• One of the steps towards getting the coveted abs

Now, here's the thing. You absolutely need to work your abs in order to get a 6-pack (more on that in a moment), but there's a very important step that a lot of us miss when working towards it.

Peekaboo - The Missing Step

The key that most people miss about abs is this:

Your abdominal muscles need to be the tissue layer closest to your skin (other than connective tissue perhaps) in order to be visible.

However, most people have fat in the abdomen area which covers up the muscle, so you don't appear to "have abs". When you have a low enough body fat percentage, the fat layer is gone, and your skin can now be taut around those muscles, showing that definition you see in the movies.

In other words, the only way you can show off your 6-pack is by having a low enough body fat percentage.

You can change your body fat percentage through diet, as mentioned above, and you can also exercise other muscles to supplement your calorie deficit goals. If you want to gain muscle as well as lose fat, then you absolutely need to exercise, and do weight training in particular. You can check out Exercise: a Broad Term to learn more.

Don't stop doing those ab exercises though; they'll set you up for your 6-pack once you attain the right body fat percentage!

When Your Abs Start to Show

When you get to your desired body fat percentage, you might notice 1 of 3 things:

1. You have a flat belly but see no abdominal muscle definition

2. You're starting to notice a bit of abdominal muscle definition

3. You have a killer 6-pack!

If you're at #1, excellent job! Now is the time you need to focus on doing more ab workouts to make those ab muscles bigger so they can show their definition! See the next section for a run-down.

At #2, you can make a choice. If this is exactly the look you're after, congratulations! Do your happy dance here and keep doing what you're doing! Note that you will need to continue your current routine in order to keep the physique you have now. If you stop working your abs, your muscles will atrophy and you will revert back to physique #1.

If you're looking for more definition, treat your abs as though you were at physique #1! In other words, do the stuff I've outlined in the next section. This will be adding intensity and frequency to your ab workouts.

If you're at #3 when you reach your body fat percentage goals, excellent work. You worked your ab muscles a lot and cut a ton of fat! That's impressive as hell.

I'm gonna say the same thing here as I did for #2 though. Some people want MORE. So if you're happy with this physique, keep doing what you're doing. If you want even MORE definition and growth, check out the tips below.

MORE!

If you're looking for something more, you can build your ab muscles by increasing:

• The number of times you do ab workouts per week

• The number of different exercises you do per ab workout

• The number of sets you do of each exercise

• The number of reps you do for each set

Some popular ab exercises are crunches, planks, hanging leg lifts, side leg twists, and bicycle crunches. Tim Ferriss uses his Myotatic Crunch and the hilariously named "Cat Vomit" exercise that he swears work magic. There are YouTube videos demonstrating those if you're interested.

To be honest, I don't know a huge amount about actual ab exercises because I'm still working on the "getting slim enough to have them" phase. Therefore, if you need more information, scour the internet for good ab workouts and find one (or several!) that you think will work and you will stick to. Remember, adherence is the #1 predictor of fitness outcomes.

Ah, the plank. The most tried and true ab exercise.

Work that Core

Ab workouts are an excellent way to balance your body strength, improve other exercises, and of course, get that dope 6-pack. But remember that you cannot get a 6-pack by working your abs if you still have fat covering the area. And you can't get rid of that fat just by training your abs.

But working your abs still has many a great benefit. So if your goals align with these, blast those abs to your heart's content!

And don't forget to Cat Vomit.