I got abs, how do I make them a six pack?

M

MysteryGuest

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I've been working out for several months now. It's been pretty great, I've lost a lot of weight (13.3% body fat last I checked) and now I have visible abs. The problem is, they're not a six pack, they're just, like, a slab of abs. I was wondering how I might alter my ab exercises in order to get a six pack?

Currently, I do three different ab exercises. I do leg lifts holding a 25lb weight with my feet. I do incline sit ups (on a bench that's at about a 45 degree angle up) holding a 10lb weight behind my head (or hugged to my chest sometimes). Finally, I got a Slendertone electric ab belt that I use every now and again while I'm at work (I work from home) usually on 90 power (The highest is 99) for one or two sessions of 30 mins. I do one of the other of the first two usually about 5 times a week. The Slendertone belt varies, but I can conceivably do it 7 days a week easily.

Is there anything else I can try? Is there any variation of these exercises I should be doing? Should I go up in weight? Would that help?
 
There's nothing to do except continue burning body ft to make the abs show. It's not a matter of how much strength training you do for them. Also, keep in mind that most self-administered body fat tests can be widely inaccurate.

As for the ab belt, I could describe in painful detail why those have absolutely zero effect on muscle tone, growth, or fat burning. I'll save you the lengthy response and just guarantee you that you wasted your money.
 
The body fat % test was not self administered, it was something offered for free at my gym. It was given by people in scrubs, so I assume they were nurses or some other form of medical personnel. What body fat percentage should I expect to see my six pack then?

And about the ab belt: I'm curious to see the studies you've read about them. They seem to work for both me and my brother (though not as well as other ab exercises) and I certainly feel sore afterwards which seems like a good sign. Why don't they work?
 
MysteryGuest said:
And about the ab belt: I'm curious to see the studies you've read about them. They seem to work for both me and my brother (though not as well as other ab exercises) and I certainly feel sore afterwards which seems like a good sign. Why don't they work?
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DOMS is no way to measure whether something "worked" or not. You can get sore from every workout you ever do and never see results.

Up the weight of your ab exercises.
 
Strength of abs and definition are so totally seperate it's not worth comparing them. Watch worlds strongest man Zydrunas Savickas and you will have to agree he must have a rock solid core with abs stronger than any member here could even dream of having. You will also notice that these are invisible to the naked eye.
I have used various methods of body fat measurement and now use zapper scales for comparison not religious belief. The only 100% guaranteed method is MRI scan and that is a tad extreme. If there is a coating of fat between the eyes and your abs they will not be clearly visible without posing them, as is done in the nice magazine photos people idolise. At around 17% I can pull a 6 but at rest they are a 1 pack with soft definition between them and obliques, that is the real world.
Exercise wise remember the abs are at work near enough all of the time, they are a major postural muscle. As such they need rest and recovery to improve so if you are hitting them daily the reason they aren't showing is because they are never fully repaired. As stated I can easily pull a 6 on demand, I do no isolation exercises for abs at all, I do however perform deadlifts, squats, balance work, run and all manner of other things that hit my abs hard. If I was to add a lot of ab work to this it would damage my ability to do the other work and my ab strength, a little bit of isolation would likely be good for me, but I have to sleep sometimes.
 
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MysteryGuest said:
The body fat % test was not self administered, it was something offered for free at my gym. It was given by people in scrubs, so I assume they were nurses or some other form of medical personnel. What body fat percentage should I expect to see my six pack then?

And about the ab belt: I'm curious to see the studies you've read about them. They seem to work for both me and my brother (though not as well as other ab exercises) and I certainly feel sore afterwards which seems like a good sign. Why don't they work?
Click to expand...

There's a few reasons that were explained to me when I was learning how to administer NMES. Firstly, electrical stimulation recruits muscles in the wrong order (fast twitch before slow twitch) resulting in faulty neuromuscular training, and so you'll get little strength gain out of it.

Aside from that, the contraction elicited by electricity in no way comes close to the strength of a voluntary muscle contraction, and so there is no adequate muscle work occurring anyway to either challenge the muscle to become stronger or break it down to hypertrophy. Believe me when I tell you that the strength of stimulation you would need to actually see any of those effects would put you in an unbelievable amount of pain.
 
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