Despite being a Personal Trainer and having a lifelong commitment to fitness, I’m actually a very body conscious person. I’m not really sure where this came from, but nevertheless I’m not someone who freely exposes his body in the way that some others confidently do.
Despite this, I wanted to share some things with you because it’s at this time of year that ab challenges and the like start appearing on the internet and in people’s news feeds. If you want visible abs, for your own self esteem, to look good on the beach or just because you want a challenge, then I want you to be aware of the myths of ab training, and to understand what is realistic for you based on what you are willing to do. For most people, if you genuinely want visible abs and have been frustrated by poor results, the reality is that you probably need to be willing to unlearn some things that you have picked up over the years.

The first picture of me below was taken on holiday in 2007, the second and third in 2010 in a professional photo shoot, the fourth, this morning, not long after I had woken up.

These photos show a few things:

1) lighting affects how your abs look-so always question pictures you see online and in before and after shots.

2) It’s easier to get a good ab shot when someone else is taking the pic!

3) I’ve been able to maintain pretty good abdominal definition consistently.

Despite the fourth picture probably being the worst photo, I can honestly say that I feel it’s the best one. It’s the most real, no lighting to enhance shadows, I don’t have any sort of a tan and I feel that I’m leaner now than in the other pictures.

But I haven’t maintained this through daily crunches or planks, in fact on average I only train my abs once per week. Three times every 14 days would be my max.

That may be surprising to anyone who has done an ab challenge requiring them to train their abs every day. If you want visible abs you need to understand these fundamental facts:

1) No amount of abdominal training will give you visible abs if there is too much body fat on top of them for them to show through.

2) Abdominal exercises will not burn the body fat on top of your abdominal muscles-that’s just not how your body works.

Now understand these things about me and my training goals:

I don’t train specifically for a six pack or visible abs. I train to be fit in multiple ways (strength, stamina, quickness, flexibility), to be as healthy as I can be and to offset age related changes in fitness.
I do eat carbohydrates.
If I have visible abs I want them to be a positive effect of my lifestyle choices rather than a goal in themselves (it wasn’t always this way though-I was a teenager once!).
I’m very dedicated and strict with my nutritional choices and consistent with my exercise habits.

The best way to get visible abs isn’t necessarily to do lots of abdominal training. As we have established, this on its own will not burn body fat which may be preventing the abs from showing through. In order to get visible abs we need to put the body in the best possible place to burn excess body fat on top of them. This takes dedication and discipline and a whole body approach. Also, the leaner/healthier weight you are, the harder it is to burn body fat because the lighter you are, the less energy it takes for your to move so you burn less calories through exercise than a heavier version of you. In situations such as this even more dedication and discipline is required when it comes to nutrition and choosing the right kinds of exercise.

This doesn’t mean abdominal training is a waste of time, having strong core muscles is essential to prevent back pain, and to aid in good posture (which in itself will improve the appearance of your abdomen). But you should be aware that you don’t need to spend ages every day training your abs, and you should also be aware that there’s more to your “core” than you can see in the mirror-as with any group of muscles or area of the body-muscle balance is important-pay attention to the muscles that you can’t see as much as the ones that you can.

If you really want those abs to show through, ask yourself these questions:

1) Am I willing to cut down on unnecessary calories taken in through calorific drinks and sauces and sweet foods?

2) Am I willing to work areas of my body that I may not necessarily have considered working previously, doing exercises that I previously would have neglected?

3) Am I willing to do types of exercise that may make me feel uncomfortable or may be less interesting to me than other types of exercise?

4) Am I willing to say no when people encourage me to do things which may derail me from my goals, such as eating desserts that I know I don’t need or having more calorific drinks that I know will be hard to burn off through exercise?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no” there’s nothing wrong with that, but it simply means that it may not be realistic for you to have that visible six pack or not to the level that you want.

As I said before, having visible abs takes a whole body approach and discipline with both nutrition and exercise. None of that is scary to me because I chose to make those habits a long time ago and they are simply that now-habits. But if it sounds scary to you, you can re-asses your goals, or choose to embrace the fear knowing that change is good and you are working towards something you really want.

Either way, what I really want you to take away from this is a realistic view of what ab challenges will and won’t do for you so that you don’t waste any of your valuable time doing things that won’t get you the results that you want.

Steve Shreeve