Take These Steps to See Your Abs
“Dr. Czys, what do I need to do to see my ab muscles?” “I want to see my abs.”
Hey , I want you to see your abs too, I think that’s a great goal to have. Here’s what you have to do:
Number one: You’ve got to melt the snow to see the trail. You’ve got to eat really clean to get the padding out of the way, so you can actually see the muscles that are under there. You’ve got to eat really clean, watch your portions, and “melt” anything covering it up.
Number two: You’ve got to make the muscles themselves grow. So let’s say I want to get my bicep bigger. I’m not going to make my bicep bigger by doing a million curls with a little tiny weight. Just like you’re not going to make your muscles more prominent by doing a whole bunch of little tiny crunches, or any of those common little gimmicky ab things. So you’ve got to make the muscles bigger, and you make the muscles bigger by doing hard things, just like I would curl really heavy weights to make my bicep bigger.
So what hard things would I do? One, I would do the ab wheel. The ab wheel is phenomenal, you just have to make sure when you’re doing it to flex your stomach really hard the whole time. Two, I like to do L-holds. Where I’m hanging from a bar, or have my hands on two boxes, and I just hold my legs out or knees up, and just hold, and then down, or you can do raises like that. Don’t go really fast, because that’s just momentum, just nice and controlled. If you look at gymnasts, they have these crazy ab muscles bulging out everywhere, and you know they’re not doing a million little crunches, they’re doing all kinds of holds, really strong, stabilizing holds. And then just actively flex your stomach, like when you’re planking, flex, throughout the day, flex, just flex, flex. Make your stomach hard. The thing is you want to do really challenging stomach stuff to make the muscles grow, plus melt the snow on top of them, to help see them start poking through.
The other thing, and this is very important, is you have to accept the traits you’ve been given. You know some people genetically (their phenotype, the genetic traits we’re given) just have more prominent abs. I’m one of the lucky people, I’ve always had abs that can be seen. They’ve just always been there, thanks mom and dad. I have also been exercising constantly my whole life. You ever notice how some people just have nice, big muscular calves, and some people have really skinny calves? Some people have uneven ab muscles, some are perfectly symmetrical. You have to accept the traits you’ve been given, and just maximize what you can do with it, if that makes sense. You can’t get overly discouraged if you just work, work, work, work, and you’re not seeing gains. For some people it’s just harder than others. Don’t envy others, for some people it might be really easy for them. That’s good for them, they’re lucky, but maybe not for you. But what you can do is eat really, really well, watch portions, and do good, strict, challenging abdominal exercises like the ab wheel, nice L-holds or stabilization holds, suitcase carries are also good. Google any of those and you’ll find demonstration videos. I’ll get around to making some soon.
And, with everything, think long-term, abs don’t grow over night, and it’s going to take some work. But once you get them, it’s easioer to maintain, it’s just the getting there that’s tough. Hope that helps!