The infamous six-pack is the holy grail of weight lifting.  It is so illusive and treasured, which makes it all the more appealing, like finding a diamond in the rough.  People have made fortunes teaching others how to find this “diamond in the rough”.  Watch any late night infomercial and you’ll be sure to catch the latest and greatest ab machine that’s sure to give you a six-pack in just “5 mins a day, 3 days a week”.  Again, harping on the “save time working out principle“.  

Going to the gym you see the same old same old.  People doing ab exercises they learned in PE when they were kids or if they’re lucky, following from some workout magazine.  They’re stuck on the mats, just crunching away.  Falsely believing the myth of spot reduction (which is that doing ab exercises will burn fat in that area and you’ll be able to see the abs better, more on this later).

They are misguided and not staying true to two basic principles which I’m about to teach you.  There’s more to a ripped six-pack than just ab exercises, certainly not 50-100 crunches, just like there’s more to a house than just the roof.  You have to build a foundation, then walls, then roof!

The first misguided principle is the idea of spot reduction, as I stated before.  You can do any 5 min search on Google to find out that this is wrong, yet this information hasn’t reached the masses.  Well be glad you are reading this blog because your eyes are about to be opened if you believe in Spot Reduction.  Your body loses fat holistically.  When your body is in Survival Mode, meaning it’s more interested in storing energy rather than burning it, it stores fat quickly in the midsection for most people.  It does this throughout the body pretty evenly, but more in some places than others obviously.  So just as it stores pretty evenly, with more bias to certain areas, it’ll burn evenly, with more bias to certain areas.  So in order to lose that fat on top of your abs, you need to burn fat holistically.  NOT by doing more ab crunches.  That builds the muscle underneath but is still covered by the fat.  The best way is to do cardio.  I prefer high intensity for short time vs. low intensity for longer periods. 

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, if you’re like me and you’ve never really struggled with fat, or you’ve burned that fat away and you really want to make your abs shine…the secret isn’t to do more crunches.  Sorry.  All skeletal muscles in your body are made of two major types of fibers being Type I – fast twitch and Type II – slow twitch.  Fast twitch are used to do heavy loads quickly, such as lifting a couch, or running a 100m sprint.  Slow twitch are for low intensity physical excursions that last longer than 2 mins.  Now, by nature, some muscles have more Type I than Type II and vice verse.  For example, your biceps, by design are only supposed to move your lower arm toward you shoulder and twist your lower arm, have more Type I fibers because they don’t have to work that long.  Your abs on the other hand, because they are recruited for EVERY move you make during a day, have more Type II fibers than Type I.  

Now this is where we seperate myth from fact.  Because your abs have more Type II than Type I fibers, doesn’t mean the way you make them larger is by doing more of an endurace workout such as 50-100 crunches.  Type II fibers by design, aren’t supposed to grow very large.  They don’t need to because generally they don’t move a lot weight!  The fact is that in order to really make your abs stand out, you have to develop the Type I fibers, because they are designed to grow larger. 

So that being said, train your abs like you train your biceps or chest depending on your goal body image.  Of course you still want to incorporate some endurance workouts like Planks or Flutter Kicks into the workout to train your abs all they way around, but don’t let that be the core of your workouts.  As I demonstrated before in my blog about your goal body, you have to train every muscle toward that goal because the way you train determines the way you look.  Point, blank, period.  

I stumbled upon this when I really began to seek the six pack I wanted.  I’d been in sports nearly all my life and a strong core was necessary.  Especially in Tae Kwon Do where I was being kicked in the midsection several times a week.  We would do all types of ab workouts, and because of my low body fat, I was able to develop a toned mid section at an early age.  But as I got older, I wanted more of a pop out ab look with defined hills and valleys.  I wanted the washboard!  But no matter how many crunches I did (I could do hundreds) it never seem to come.  So I decided to stray from convention and train my abs the way I train everything else.  Low and behold it worked!  When I analyzed it, it also made sense. 

I’ve included a video of the weighted ab exercises I do to get and keep a six pack that many gym goers envy.  These are for intermediate to advanced trainers and should be attempted when you’ve built up the ab muscles to do them correctly (or after you’ve watched my videos, lol).  Start with light weights and move up as you get stronger of course.  You can hurt yourself if you don’t do them correctly so don’t say I didn’t warn you.  I train my abs just like every other muscle.  I work them twice a week with a high intensity weighted workout with reps not exceeding 12.  I watch my nutrition, which you can read about in that blog post, and I do high intensity cardio 3 times a week.  This works for me, but of course depending where you are in your training, you may have to do more or less, or something completely different, also depending on your goals.   

So I hope you come away from this with a different point of view on your abs.  A mentor of mine, Vince Delmonte, has some great ab articles in my Articles section which will give you more information on how to build the abs you are looking for. 

Until next time, Happy Lifting!

Mitchell

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