How To BUILD More Visible Abs (3 Science-Based Steps)

If you want to make your six-pack pop and get your abs to show even at a higher body fat percentage, then one of the ways you can achieve this is by actually growing your abs. If you choose the right abs exercises and get stronger with them over time, your abs will respond with growth and hence improve the overall look and visibility of your six-pack. Research agrees with this: a recent 2017 paper analyzed the effect of 10 weeks of regular abdominal training on abdominal growth in twenty-eight collegiate male soccer players. And after the 10 weeks, they experienced a significant 2.1mm increase, 1.9mm increase, and 2.7mm increase in the thickness of their upper, mid, and lower abs respectively. In this video, I’ll show you how to get abs to show through fat through proper ab exercise progression. I’ll cover three evidence-based steps you need to follow when it comes to how to grow abs fast, so you achieve your desired shredded abs.

The first step to get your abs to show is to choose the right exercises. While there are many abs exercises to choose from, not all are equally effective in helping you grow your abs. According to the 2017 paper mentioned earlier, it was found that subjects that performed only static or isometric abs exercises like the plank, experienced no abdominal growth after 10 weeks. Therefore, static exercises like the plank wouldn’t be your best bet for growing your abs when compared to dynamic exercises that take the abdominal muscles through their full range of motion. More specifically, though, you'll want to opt for dynamic abs exercises, such as the Swiss ball crunch, reverse crunch, and the hanging leg raise.

The second step to follow when it comes to how to grow abs fast is to perfect your form. And this is critical because if you don’t, you’ll end up shifting the load to other muscle groups – such as the hip flexors – instead of working your abs. When it comes to the weighted cable crunch, you should choose a weight you can control and lock your hips into the starting position with your knees bent at roughly 90 degrees. Then, exhale and tighten your abs by thinking about drawing your belly button in towards your spine to create more stability. Only then should you crunch the weight downwards by bringing your shoulders down towards your hips by flexing your spine, as this is precisely what the abs are responsible for doing. And as you crunch down, don't let your hips sink back into your heels. Keep them locked in the starting position. All the movement should come from the flexion of your spine.

Then for bottom-up movements like the reverse crunch, again you need to avoid aimlessly swinging and just using momentum, as this makes it a hip flexor exercise with little stimulation of the lower abs. Instead, you need to first again exhale and tighten your abs by drawing your belly button while moving into posterior pelvic tilt such that your lower back is flat against the bench. And then from here, think about raising your pelvis off the bench and curling it towards your belly button while visualizing your lower abs working to do so.

The final step in how to get abs to show through fat is to ensure ab exercise progression. And just so you have a systematic way of doing so, what I'd recommend is stick to a rep range of roughly 10-15 reps for your sets of weighted abs exercises and overload it based on that rep range. So, for example, let's say you have 3 sets of the weighted cable crunch to do. Once you can comfortably complete all 3 sets of the exercise with 15 quality reps, then you're now ready to overload it further by simply increasing the weight to the next increment. And then again with the new weight, once you build up the abdominal strength to complete 3 sets of 15 quality reps, you can proceed to bump up the weight even more and repeat the process.

So, I hope you were able to see that you'll be able to effectively increase the thickness and growth of your abdominal muscles through the three outlined steps. But keep in mind that you'll also need first to strip off excess belly fat to reveal all your hard work. And this is where nutrition and eating the right foods in the right amounts become critical.

For a science-based step-by-step program that shows you exactly how to work out and how to set up your nutrition to effortlessly drop fat week after week, take the quiz below to discover what fat loss program is best for you:
builtwithscience.com/bws-free-fitness-quiz/gend…

Filmed by: Bruno Martin Del Campo

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STUDIES:

10-WEEK CORE TRAINING ON SOCCER PLAYERS
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6226075/?fbcli…