8 Reasons Your Abs Aren't Showing

These are 8 REAL reasons why your abs aren't showing. Learn how to grow bulkier abs and how to make them pop out more. This is the fastest way to get your abs to show. Discover the truth about losing lower ab fat and how to get your abs to be more visible.

If your abs aren't showing after doing tons of crunches and eating clean it can be very discouraging. Being stuck at this in between phase where you have a slim waist but either no abs or just a faint outline of the top two abs, is actually a very common problem but by fixing the issues that are preventing you from seeing your abs you can quickly start making progress towards a more defined looking midsection with abs that clearly show.

So lets start with the most obvious issue which is body fat percentage. The amount of fat you have on your body will play one of the biggest impacts on how visible your abs are. Unfortunately the belly area is one of the last spots to drop fat so you'll see fat reduction from your face, hands, and arms long before you see it coming off your stomach. The key is to be consistent with your diet and to stick to a calorie deficit made up of healthy single ingredient foods for long enough for the fat to start coming off of the areas close to your center of mass. No matter how hard you work your abs of you have a layer of fat covering your abs your abs are just not going to show. Now you mightve been told to get your body fat percentage under 12 percent as a man to see your abs, but this exact measurement strategy is flawed. Some men will start seeing well defined abs at 14 percent and others will have to cut more body fat.

This is due to the fact that different people have different bodies that have different preferential fat storage patterns. So if your body loves to store and retain fat specifically around the midsection you'll have to cut down further than someone who primarily stores fat around his hips. The solution to this is to once again stay consistent with reducing calories by eating healthy calorie dense foods like lean sources of protein, veggetables, and fruits for long enough until your body fat percentage is low enough to have thise abs pop out more.   Now if your diet is good and you're starting to get lean you could be making many different mistakes during your workouts that prevent your abs from growing properly. For example one of the biggest issues I see with ab workouts is that most people don't use enough weight to train their abs and instead they perform way Too Many Reps. This belief that you should train your abs with high reps stems from the false idea that they are slow-twitch fiber dominant. And the best way to stimulate slow twitch fibers is with a lot of reps. Well turns out that first of all, research shows you'll build more muscle when you train with a variety of reps instead of always using the same number. (6)

Second, studies show that the abdominal muscles have a balanced muscle profile type of around 55 to 58 percent slow-twitch fibers, while the other almost half of the fibers are fast twitch. This is why it’s especially beneficial to use a variety of rep ranges instead of only doing high reps. (7) For example, you could do four sets of heavy declined situps for six to ten reps and, once you’re done, you can do hanging leg raises for three sets of fifteen to twenty reps. You can also superset the 2 starting with your heavy set for 6 to 10 reps and then immediately finishing off with a lighter set of 15 to 20 reps. Not using heavy weight and not focusing on upping the weightload used overtime tends to be the bigger issue. Theres no more sure fire way to know youre properly progressively overloading your abs than moving up from using a 35 pound weight on declined situps for 10 reps to a 50 pound weight for those same 10 reps. The issue with high reps in general is that most people rarely take those sets to failure. That failure would be guaranteed if you just bumped the weight up everytime you completed a set of 10 reps but if your focusing on more reps true failure becomes more difficult to objectively achieve. And you dont hit failure with your high rep sets many studies show that high-rep training becomes less effective than training with low or moderate reps. (8) So personally I reccommend you concentrate primarily on upping the weight load overtime and then sprinkling in some high rep supersets that have you hit failure within the first 20 reps. 

Another issue that many people run into is believing that doing compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, and chin ups are enough to develop the ab muscles. Unfortunately thats just not true. if you want more defined and developed abs, you’ll have to do direct ab exercises. In fact, if you’re beyond the beginner phase, it’s unlikely that compound exercises will develop your abs any further than where they are currently.

[GravityTransformation]

References
1. A study examining muscle activity levels during various exercises, including the back squat, revealed that while participants performed the back squat at 90% of their 3RM, abdominal muscle activation barely reached 20% of maximum voluntary contraction.

2. Research on the clean and jerk exercise – which combines the movement patterns of a deadlift, squat, and overhead press – also reveals low core activity levels (rectus abdominis, internal obliques, and external obliques).

3. Data indicates you can produce two times more force during an eccentric contraction and 50% more during a concentric contraction than during isometric ones.

4. Data indicates you can produce two times more force during an eccentric contraction and 50% more during a concentric contraction than during isometric ones.

5. It’s best to train through a full range of motion studies.

6. First of all, research shows you'll grow more muscle when you train with a variety of reps instead of with always the same number.

7. Research indicates that the abdominal muscles have a balanced muscle type profile of around 55-58% slow-twitch fibers.

8. When training with high reps, it is important you take those sets to failure if you want to maximize muscle growth. Otherwise high-rep training isn’t as effective as training with low or moderate reps, as shown by various studies

9. A 2016 study published in the European Journal of Sport Science found that focusing on the targeted muscles during resistance exercises led to increased muscle activation, as measured by electromyography (EMG).

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7:30 Train abs on a specific day, eg, with arms and shoulders

9:00 Choose dynamic exercises more than static

[jackmarston]

I've been in a deficit for a while but when I started doing weighted decline sit ups, hanging leg raises, and ab wheel rollouts I think it really started to help my abs show.

[neemzer]

i have been watching this channel for maybe 10 years now, and they always deliver!

[theoryg]

This was loaded with good info Thank You!

[hilihkintil]

Wow soo that's why! Thanks! I got it wrong on focusing the reps count and static position like plank. This is soo informative.

[mrcanntell]

Everybodies different found what works 4 u. Variations is key.Respect

[physicalimprovement]

Just discovered this page today and I can see why the amount of subscribers is over five million. The level of detail from this content creator is second to none. I can't wait to consume more!

[ksad]

your videos have been very helpful.. thank you very much for helping me . ❤

[Aydin-Adam]

I just had to come by and leave a comment under Max's most recent video and give a testimonial. I turn 43 years old in a few weeks. I've been in decent shape for the past 15 years or so - intermittent fasting since 2010, workout 6 or 7 days a week, but not always eating the healthiest. Since returning from Dubai in February 2022 with my wife for our anniversary, I put on 40 lbs and have struggled to get back to my ideal weight. I still would work out every morning but things just kind of became routine and over the past 6 weeks I've been struggling to shed those extra lbs. Not only that, I wasn't getting good sleep. I would get about 4 hours of sleep every night, no matter how hard I tried.

Since finding this channel just a week ago and applying changes to my routine based on Max's guidance, I've already dropped 3 lbs, but that's not the big thing. For the first time in my life I actually feel my body transforming throughout the day, and there are already visible results. And I've been getting at least 7 1/2 hours of sleep every night with no problem. I can feel the fat burning and the muscles building. This morning at the gym I even received a comment from another regular who always greets me every morning. When he saw me he said, "Man! You're looking good, brother!"

I owe it all to Max and his guidance. I feel great throughout the day. I feel better than I've felt in years. I'm not starving myself to try to lose weight only to end up frustrated and seeing little to no results. I'm just trying to keep up with my sex goddess wife 😂 And thanks to Max, I'm excited about where this journey I've really just begun will lead me.

I cannot thank you enough, Max. You're doing the Lord's work. 👏

[censorshipleadstothenwo]

No wonder this guy has 5.5 million subscribers. What a plethora of knowledge this guy has and shares to the world with great video skills.

[harry-uffw]

Hello thank you for this video can you do a video of some exercie for beginner ?

[rounaksubramanian]

Wo this is a very excellent and brilliant video bro telling about this topic and about why our abs are not showing and you are doing a wonderful work by making this content and keep it up

[carlosacevedo]

This will change my life! I can see it

[sanderriska]

great video have been feeling empty in progrssion because of stubborness from a good looking routine, rather its better to switch over then back on routine but keep it going consistantly, thanks

[KillerGaming]

if my water intake is 2.5 then that case i want to take creatine .so what would i do

[dimitrivandenheede]

Great video. the exercise part is the biggest problem for me. The exercises that make my abs burn, also hurt my back (i had operation and some of the vertebrae are fixated).

[squidmissiletv]

If your problem is that you don't show ENOUGH ab definition then you are still doing great.

[HaimGreen]

Excellent, exactly what I was looking for ⚠

[ss]

I do 3x20 weighted decline sit-ups and 4x10 hanging leg raises with my full body workouts 3x a week and I have visible abs even though I’m at 25-30% body fat. My fat sits around my hips and thighs, not my middle section