Six Pack Abs Overrated

I have really wanted a sixpack for a long time, now that I have one it would really disappointment to lose it. That said I do think that sixpacks, a lot like biceps are overrated. Here is why;

Back in the day people didn't train specifically for getting a sixpack, they did a lot of compound full body lifts utilizing very heavy weights. In order to pickup or press a heavy weight a strong core is a necessity. You support a semi truck on top of most mailbox posts because the post would snap and the same is true for your abs. You may have the legs to pickup something heavy and the upperbody to press it but if the mid section is weak then you won't be able to support the weight.

Strong abs were more of a byproduct of these lifts then the focus. Even if you have a tremendous set of abs they weren't stick out of a belly full of fat. So it is important to have very little bodyfat. Therefore a person with low bodyfat that was lifting huge weights would acquire a great sixpack in the process. If someone had such a sixpack then it was a good indicator that they were very strong, handling large amounts of weight and very lean to boot.

Now with so many people obsessed with abs we have people that do ab specific exercises and diet for a low bodyfat percentage and they have abs but don't have the great total body strength that the old timers had. Where abs used to be a indicator of total body strength (along with low bodyfat) now it merely means exactly what it is, good abs but not necessarily anything else.

This may seem to contradict what I have said in the past as I have pointed out the benefits of doing heavy total body lifts such as deadlifts and squats (similar to these aforementioned old timers) and now I am saying that a lot of people today have abs from doing ab specific exercises like I have said aren't as effective. But I am not contradicting myself, you can get abs without doing these heavy lifts. I just feel these are the most effective because they burn a lot of fat (most important key) while helping to increase the ab muscles and help them popout. Not saying this is the only way. But if you lift like this then even if you never get great abs you will know that you have some serious full body strength, just the kind you need for real life tasks like lifting furniture etc.

As for my saying that abs are overrated like biceps? I will explain about my feeling on biceps in a later article.

As I have mentioned before I feel that biceps are overrated, in that same article I talk about how old strongmen did a lot of heavy full body lifts. They weren't trying to make one small muscle group get large but were rather going for “real world” strength (well maybe just strength for more full body lifts but “real world” strength is what they got. The nature of a pulling lift like a deadlift requires the biceps to be able to handle a lot of weight. Thus if you are lifting heavy weights in such a manner you will eventual strengthen you biceps. Additionally if you have high levels of human growth hormones then you will naturally acquire more muscular arms.

So much like I have said that abs were the result of people with low bodyfat and tons of heavy lifting and not the point of these workouts. A big bicep would mean that a person was pulling extremely heavy lifts that worked the bicep (if you are deadlifting enough to build the biceps you are probably hitting some other muscles first) and or have high levels of human growth hormones. Therefore someone with these bulging muscles would be very strong.

When you concentrate on biceps with exercises like curls you can increase your arms but this has less real world payoff as curling is not a motion we have to perform very often and doesn't hit as many muscles. It also doesn't have the same human growth hormone boosting effect. So if you have two identical twins who have equal biceps, but one gained them from performing curls and other bicep specific exercises just for this purpose while the other one gained these as a byproduct of heavy deadlifting then the 2^nd one will likely be much stronger in nearly all aspects.

This is why I feel that when people get hung up on bicep size they are overrating them as if they are gained specifically for the purpose of having big biceps then it doesn't indicate a lot about the persons actually strength.