11 Bad Ideas That Can Cost You Your Six-Pack

Don’t lose time on your road to getting a six-pack by believing any of these eleven common myths. Let’s clear them up and save you a lot of frustration!

1. Doing Hundreds Of Crunches Gives You A Six-Pack

If your ab muscle is residing beneath a comfy layer of fat, doing crunches makes them bigger, but the fat won’t go away. If you do hundreds of crunches instead of making them more difficult, the abs will even stop getting bigger.

2. Sit-Ups Are The Best Exercise To Get Abs

No, to train the  muscle, crunches are better, because they isolate the rectus abdominis muscle responsible for the six-pack look pretty well. With sit-ups, the work is shared between it and the deeper hip muscles. They also cause a lot of stress for the spine.

3. Dieting Gets You Abs

Yes and no. Yes, because losing weight will shrink the fat layer covering your abs. However, without training those muscles, they are too small to become visible.

4. You Shouldn’t Eat Food X Or Y To Get A Six-Pack

Wrong, when you want to lose weight you can eat any food you like, as long as you burn more calories than you eat. Some foods, like fast food, just make it easier to overeat.

5. Fitness Gadgets Get You Abs Without Much Effort

No, in order for a muscle to get bigger, it needs to do work. Gadgets like this one take the work away and getting your abs trained just takes longer.

6. But I Can Train The Abs Daily

While it’s true that the rectus abdominis recuperates faster than some other muscles on the human body, training it every day is overkill. Especially if you put it through the paces with a complete ab workout – then you should give it as much as rest as you would any other muscle.

7. All Girls Love A Six-Pack On Guys

Not quite belonging in here, but it may save you time if it’s the sole reason for you wanting to go through all the trouble: if you want abs, do it mainly for yourself and not to get female attention. Because as a measure of improving your attractiveness, you shouldn’t overly count on them.

8. You Can Target The Lower Abs

The rectus abdominis is one long muscle and you can’t just work part of it. The reason the lower abs are covered by fat is that for men fat in that area usually is the last to go.

9. Your Abs Will Look Just Like In The Magazines

Fitness models chosen for photo shoots usually have symmetrical abs, where the left and right are at the same height. But for many men, they don’t line up as perfectly.

10. When The Six-Pack Is There, It Will Stay

No, it will only remain visible when you maintain a body fat percentage of about 7 – 9% (for men) or 12 – 14% (for women).

11. When I Have A Six-Pack, I Can Get An 8-Pack

For most people a six-pack is possible, yet an 8-pack can stay out of reach. Our bodies all follow the basically same “blueprint,” but some of us have the last two ribs sitting too deep to become visible.

You Can Do It – For Free

The secret is really simple and it doesn’t require buying anything: lower your body fat percentage and train your ab muscles. Here is all you need to get on the road.

Picture courtesy of Walt Stoneburner.