Finally The Secret To 6-Pack Abs

Target your lower abs to finally get that 6 pack!! Ok, now that you’ve read the opening sentence and want to know how, I’m here to tell you to forget about it!! First, you can’t really target “lower abs”. Lower abs isn’t even a muscle. The muscle at play (that’s right, the 1 single muscle) when you see a six-pack is called the rectus abdominis. You no more have a lower ab than you do a lower bicep or lower triceps muscle. When you contract your rectus abdominis, it contracts from bottom to top. (it contracts from the bottom where it originates at the pubic bone and flexes the spine by pulling its other end closer, which attaches at the ribs and sternum)

You will often see people doing legs lifts or some kind of hip flexion movement thinking they are working their “lower abs”. The problem with this is the rectus abdominis doesn’t attach to your legs so raising your legs will have no effect. Whenever you flex at the hip you are using and working out your hip flexor muscles; any abdominal activation is merely secondary as it helps to stabilize the hip during the movement.

The second problem with this is that quite a few people already have over-active hip flexors so these people would want to avoid any extra hip flexor work. To work the rectus abdominis you need to do 1 of 3 things:

Flex the spine (as in crunches);

Flex the spine laterally (side-to-side like side bends);

Rotate the spine—that’s it, those are the only 3 isolated functions of the rectus abdominis---or the “6- pack muscles”. Not anywhere in that list does it mention anything about raising the legs or doing sit ups.

Oh ya, about building that “six-pack”. The problem with trying to attain one is that it isn’t healthy; there, I said it!! Someone had to!! The body needs a certain amount of fat just to stay alive (called essential fat) then it needs more fat still just to stay healthy. For men that would be around the 10-20% body fat range. For women that would be around the 20-30% body fat range. If you see someone with one of those “six pack abs” then you are looking at someone with probably less than 10% body fat; not good if you are a female and not so good for males either. So, forget the magazines, forget the fitness models, forget the advertisements on TV and for the love of all that is good and holy, please forget what you see and hear on social media.

Don’t be them!

Be you!

Social media is filled with thousands of people with no qualifications to be speaking about anything fitness related just to gain followers and likes. Strive for eating good foods most of the time (notice I didn’t say “all the time”) get some activity in (forget the treadmill, do something fun!...gardening, put on some music and dance, punch a punching bag-- anything) get plenty of sleep and work on getting rid of the stress in your life.

That there my friends is the recipe for a long, healthy life!

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