People with visible abs, when did you reach it?
I lift regularly and I think I have good numbers. For information:
- age: 37
- Height: 178cm
- Weight: 72kg now
- Bench: 7 reps wkth 71kg
- Squat: 8 reps with 79kg (i recently recovered from a knee injury)
- Pull up: 1 rep with 35kg attached to a weight belt
- Kneeling ab-wheel rollot: I can do a straight set of 30 reps, followed by another of 25 and then more 20. Am working om doing it standing, but it's hard.
My SO decided to go on a diet and I joined her to help. My goal is to have a six pack abs for the first time in my life.
I don't even plan to maintain it all around. I just want to reach this milestone for a day or two and call it a day. After that I'll maintain weight for a month or two then start bulking. I am counting calories and macros.
I know it is a bullshit goal, but why not.
Anyway, I dropped from 77kg to 72kg and reached a point where she pointed out that my cheeks are sucked in. And I agree, my face is skinny right now.
I feel like I'm close, but I don't really know. Here are some pics I took this morning when flexing for reference: (1) (2)
My unflexed belly is not much bigger than this tho. I don't have fat hanging anymore.
Photos of men with defined six-pack abs are frequently taken after a period of dehydration to accentuate them, in addition to getting to quite low body fat percentages. So if you want a single day with a really good picture, that would be a strategy. This is probably not good for your general health and fitness though -- I would generally recommend focusing on that rather than specifically on defined abs. Your abs look pretty good already in the pictures you send imo, fwiw.
To add to that. Not everyone has the right body to have a 6 pack. It all depends on your genetics. Humans are born with different numbers of abdominal muscle bands and those are what produce the desired physical feature.
You may be born with 1, 2, 3, 4, ect. and nothing can change how many you have. So if you've got a 2 pack but try everything to get a 6 pack then don't be so hard on yourself.
I’m sorry, maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I think I have to respectfully call BS. Eeryone has the same number and placement of abdominal muscles… if you’re missing whole muscles that would be an extremely rare genetic defect.
That said, I’m not a doctor… any doctors here care to chime in?
How many "packs" you have is about how many tendonous intersections run across your rectus abdominus muscles. You're indeed correct that not having rectus abdominus muscles would be a very rare genetic defect. However, how many intersections you have as well as their placement is genetic and also malleable (many people undergo surgery to artificially create this or to even out symmetry). If you're curious to read more about the science of this, here's a link to a review study on this subject.
This is so fascinating! A warning to others that the study contains pictures of the insides of cadavers ie dead bodies. I expect some might be squeamish about that.
I had always thought the different numbers were due to training so it’s interesting to know that it’s set before birth. This study does suggest that the more intersections one has (ie the greater the number of your pack) the stronger the muscles have the potential to be, so there is some truth to an 8-pack being stronger than a 4-pack, but extra training won’t take you from 4 to 8.
Whoa that’s crazy, thanks!
No problem. I'm obviously no doctor either. But it's a weird thing I've picked up while reading. Looking a bitore into it I found this explination, which gives a little more context.
"Everyone has two rectus abdominis muscles, but the number of bands of connective tissue that run horizontally across the abdomen varies. These bands give the appearance of a 6-pack or 8-pack. The number of bands a person is born with is completely up to chance. "
I think at this point it’s probably more of a fat percentage issue than the actual muscles. You should try calculating your fat percentage, around 12% is when they truly start to appear visible. By your photos, you look like you’re somewhere around the 15% range Body fat percentage for me
Trainers always say abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym. You probably have a great set of abs hiding just underneath a little too much fat. Keep going though, you’re super close!
Just so it's clear, "too much fat" for showing abs, an absolutely healthy amount for a fit person.
Completely agree with you and definitely didn’t mean it that way. From what I’ve heard most models and fitness influencers don’t keep their abs for very long because of the toll it takes on their diet.
100 percent correct! Your comment should be pinned for anyone frustrated about why they workout so much and can't seem to trim down!
It isn't easy to package as a new program, or supplement, or revolutionary new whatever... At the end of the day calories are much much easier to abstain from consuming, than metabolize into fuel (with notable exceptions for small population of endocrine system regulation disorders, who typically benefit, even more, from strict calorie awareness and monitoring).
OP is probably already aware, but unlike the very common misconception on the subject, there is no feasible way to do enough flutter kicks, v-ups, or mason twists to develop visible abs. Iggy-pop (aging myself here) is in his 70s, and has had an eight-pack since the '70s, despite never hitting the gym (mainly because cigarettes appear to have been his primary source of sustenance). He'd be about 6-12% body fat on the chart here (depending on the year of the picture) https://athleanx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Images-Photos-of-Different-Body-Fat-Percentages.jpg
One hour of running burns roughly 500-600 calories at a moderate pace, the elliptical—about half that. It takes about a 500-700 calorie deficit everyday for a week to burn the amount of calories represented by a pound of body fat. To get to Iggy-pop levels of shreddedness, you either need to do a bunch of stimulants, to replicate a constant state of exercise, or (if you care about having teeth that is) simply consume fewer calories. It's that simple. There's no getting around the laws of conservation of mass and thermodynamics.
To see abs on the guy with 25-30% body fat in the previous chart, he would need to maintain a caloric deficit of 500-700 calories every day for about six months. (Very broad strokes here, assuming he's a 6' male in his 30s, weighs ~220lbs to start, exercises moderately, trying to lose a pound a week (realistic goal), and end up around 190 lbs).
Some other notes:
On balance, sugar from soda probably plays a controlling role in fat gain—among other negative health outcomes. (controversy still exists about whether that's due to fructose intrinsically inducing liver fat accumulation as an endocrinology phenomenon, or whether it's just a very tasty source of dense carbohydrate energy) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32644139/ doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.9993 (meta-analysis from 2020, highly cited)
Although this was all about getting visible abs, nobody should think looking like Iggy-pop is something I would advocate for. Holistic strength training, while maintaining a healthy weight, is way more important than an arbitrary body fat percentage. 15-17% is fantastic if you're functioning training and mobile. Sub 10% is a fine goal, but it's a personal appearance one, not a health one. It's fine to want to look good naked, but most people suffer from mobility, strength, and balance troubles as they age. Not lack of photoshoot ready abs.
If you want to make a plan, there are so many calories calculators out there. This one is fine: www.omnicalculator.com/health/calorie-deficit
I've always been tall and thin, with a flat stomach my entire life. No matter what ab exercises I did (planks, bicycle crunches, etc) my abs never grew to be visible.
That all changed when I got an ab wheel. Instead of the widely harped "abs are trained by sustained exercises", the ab wheel turned it into the "until muscle failure" that you use for all the other muscle groups for body building. Within a few weeks for repeated muscle failure with rests I went from completely flat to what you have in your pictures.
The 2 most important things are proper form to ensure you target only your abs (no back, shoulders, legs, or arms) and to repeat until failure. In other words, no different than any other single-muscle-group exercise.
Muscle failure promotes muscle growth, if kneeling fails to reach failure in a timely manner then it's time to do standing rollouts. You mention doing 7/8/1 reps with other exercises, then wildly jump up to 75 with abs. Why give abs a special treatment when it should be treated no different than any other muscle group? For standing rollouts, start small if you have to, only rolling out a couple dozen cm, but general principle is the same as all body building: maintain control, target the muscle, and reach failure timely.
As another ab/six pack person, ab wheel is amazing. You can get one at Target for about $7 and use it for the next 17 years. I still have the one I bought in 2012 and I use it almost every day. It is by far my favorite exercise.
Probably not the story you were looking for but perhaps it may provide insight.
I used to have visible abs during high school and up until very recently, but that was just because I was underweight with a higher metabolism and occasionally skipped meals. I didn't work out or anything, most physical activity was just for PE classes or occasional outdoor tomfoolery with friends. During HS specifically, a lot of peers seemed to be impressed by my abs, and once or twice I even had classmates ask to touch them (which I obliged, but I was quite socially awkward at the time so I didn't know what to do with potential signals of interest). I found the occasional positive attention nice, but I was only 120-125lbs (54-57kg) and 5'10 and I honestly felt like I needed to gain weight for the longest time (and still do today tbh). My mom always told me to eat a sandwich and "get some meat on my bones" when I'd visit... I picked up quite a few insecurities from her comments over the years but that's another subject.
At one point, I had my body fat percentage measured in a Weights class and it was at like 5%. My weight hovered up to 130lbs(59kg) after graduating high school but I'd have to practically force myself to eat to get appreciably above that.
Some self discoveries since then and a year of cross sex hormone therapy to date, I've gained another 10lbs. The abs aren't clearly visible anymore, but honestly, I'm more at peace with my body now than I ever was in the past. For me personally it gets better the more progress I make towards the upper middle "healthy" BMI ranges.
But of course, since I didn't have to work for it earlier on in life, I didn't particularly see visible abdominals as such a big deal in the first place. I definitely feel like I got the better end of the stick overall because there's less social stigma about being skinny but, as a consequence, I felt like more of my body image concerns weren't taken seriously. If I wanted, I might be able to get visible abs again if I started doing exercises for it, but they're far from the top of my personal priority list at the moment.
I guess the takeaway is that it's pretty closely tied in with weight and body fat percentage as other people in this thread mention. I guess you could also just refuse to lean your back against anything and not slouch when sitting down like I did throughout most of my life until recent years, but that could also have some potential back health impacts that I don't feel like doing research on right now.
Bad advice that I do not recommend but used in practice: a water cut and some alcohol can dehydrate you enough to display muscles. Ronnie Coleman avoided any type of drinking and kept losing Mr. Olympia until someone convinced him to drink a bit the night before the show.
(I had visible abs at 15-16 just from being young and very active. Twenty years later I doubt I'll ever see them again)
My body type is mostly lean (mostly due to genetics, probably), but I was never really athletic, so I have a bit of belly fat and not much muscle tone. I've just been working on improving my muscles in recent years. I got visible ab muscles when I was doing a lot of plank variations (mostly the one where I'm moving between a regular plank and something that looks like a plank with downward dog pose) and hollow body / dead bug variations. That was pre-pandemic, and then I gained like 7 lbs during the pandemic and haven't gotten the defined abs back since then 😂
That's just because of the nature of the exercise. Jumping from kneeling to standing is a huge jump and I am training to do it standing in the way you described.
And I do some "half" dragon flags too.
I just mentioned the 30+ reps to say that I don't think lack of abs size is my main problem here because if I press and run my finger when flexing I can feel the abs muscles really well. They are definitely not small.
I'll keep training the standing ab wheel anyway. Thanks for the answer!
I'll lose one or more two kilos, if it does not work I'll just let it go because I think it is already good as it is.
Hanging leg/knee raises seem like a good idea to avoid the awkward transitory period on the wheel, they're easier to progress by changing range of motion, eccentric control or even adding weight but that seems overkill. I have lower back issues so I'm very careful of what core exercises I do but even then I don't feel like isometric work does much for me in terms of gaining muscle mass.
Bro you already got abs! Hard to tell if it would be 4 or 6 pack with more dehydration and a more extreme cut, but you look amazing and shouldn't be so hard on yourself.
With that being said if you want more definition you're at a point where it's not going to be particularly healthy to do so. The only way they are going to get more defined is by dehydrating yourself or continuing to lose fat. You're at the point that your body will absolutely fight you if you try to lose more weight, however, and you will almost assuredly lose muscle along with the fat at that low of a bodyfat %. If you decide to take that route be sure to maximize your protein intake and maybe even look into an EC stack to really push your body to preserve muscle while you're cutting.
Until this comment, I was considering chiming in as someone with a four pack. But I had missed the pictures entirely.
Yeah, @crdpa, you're there. The only place those aren't abs is on a magazine cover. You look great. In terms of actual fitness, there's no need to shoot for definition. In terms of aesthetics, it's not worth the stress required to look like that. In terms of abs, that's what they "should" look like.
Thanks! I think I'll call it a day and maintain for a month or two then start a slow bulk.
Thanks! I think I'll call it a day and maintain for a month or two then start the eternal slow bulk haha
I've been watching the Natural Hypertrophy YouTube channel and I'll try his advice and programming for now on.
Skittles and black coffee according to Henry Cavill, i.e. extreme dehydration.
Not worth it imo.
I'm going to recommend two different exercises which I think will help. While I do a lot of different exercise, the two of the three I do every day are the key to my abs. They are the ab wheel (as mentioned above in another comment) and burpees with a pull up bar.
Ab wheel is self explanatory, just get one and start slowly and work your way up. You can Google proper way to do it but the key is to do it slowly and correctly before you start adding more and more reps.
For burpees, you can also do a quick YouTube search and you'll see how they work. The only difference I do is instead of just jumping up, I jump up and reach for a pull up bar and then do a pull up.
Between these two exercises, my stomach, chest, and shoulders are tight and exhausted.
And the third exercise I do daily is push ups.
I had sick abs when I was 0% body fat haha ( 5'9" 115 pounds)
Now that I've put on some muscle and fat (up to 178 now) my abs are a distant memory. I think you need to be really lean to even approach having a good set of abs and from what I've read a lot of it can be genetics too.
Update 2: my abs are visible almost all day long now. Took this pic right now after lunch.
What helped was unintentionally losing 1 more kg and focusing on weighted abs exercises. Doing cable crunches clicked for me and it is the most intense exercise I do.
I don't do it very often. 2 times per week is enough.
UPDATE:
I am maintaining now at 72kg and my abs are a little more visible than the pictures I posted here. Maybe since I upped my calories a little the muscles filled a little? Who knows. Maybe It's in my head.
When i flex in the morning I can see it and even not flexing with the right lighting I can see some contour. I'm pretty content with this right now and will keep this weight for two or three months until my lifts stall. Then I'll up my calories and slow bulk a little.