Secret to getting SIX PACK ABS!?

Abs and Six Pack's are the most talked about subject in fitness, and probably the most desired aspect of an impressive physique. Before I get into the SECRET to getting six pack abs, why should you be listening to me? Well I'm not claiming I'm an expert by any means, but I've been training for going on about 8 years now, and managed to get fairly lean for my first bodybuilding competition last year.

This photo was a couple days after...

As you can see I have had a decent six pack before (although I'm no where near this lean right now) so what really is the SECRET to getting six pack abs????

Well technically... EVERYONE has six pack abs, whether you can see them or not depends on a few factors:

• Genetics plays a large role in not only if you have visible six pack abs or not, but also what shape your abs will actually look like, Abdominals can be one of the most varying muscle groups when it comes to shape and overall appearance.
  
  As you can see even the number of visible abdominals can change (4 pack, 6 pack, 8 pack - as some people refer to).
• Abdominal size will also affect how visible your six pack is, obviously the thicker and more dense the abdominal muscles, the easier they'll be able to be seen, you can in fact grow your abs with weighted and bodyweight exercises, although not to the same degree as many other major muscle groups. This is due to the nature of the Abdominals acting like a sheet of muscles that contribute to keeping the core stable.
• Body fat percentage will be the most important factor when it comes to how visible your six pack will be. The lower body fat percentage, the less fat that will be covering the abs, the more visible your six pack will be! This is where people make a big mistake in exercise selection, keep in mind you cannot "spot reduce". This basically means to lose fat over your abdominals you must lose overall body fat percentage, essentially this means you can't just lose fat in your stomach area. So if you were wondering why those thousands of sit-ups weren't doing much besides give you lower back pain there's your answer.

So what can you take from all this?

Well clearly you need to either add muscle to your abdominals, or lose body fat, or both. Ideally you want to focus on reducing body fat more so than adding muscle to your abs, this will have a much greater impact on the visibility of your abdominals than simply doing lots of weighted ab exercises. Although some extra core work always helps!

So how do you reduce body fat?

Basically you have 2 choices, eat less or exercise more, or both. Losing body fat is far simpler than people make it out to be, notice I said simple not easy, they are two very different things. Depending on your training level you can do a number of things to achieve this. It could be as simple as removing processed foods from your diet, to as complicated as tracking macronutrient and caloric numbers every day...

But I'll leave that for another post ;)