The “Visible Abs Threshold” for Looking Ripped Exercise Scientist ~ Chris Williamson

How do people get abs?

It's something you download at the, the Google Play Store. Oh, abs. I wouldn't know anything about that. No personal experience. Next question. Abs are one of those 80/20 things, but in this case, it's like 95/5. Every single human has abdominal muscles, except for people that are involved in tragic accidents or something like that. And almost always and almost ever, the reason you can't see yours is because your layer of fat on top of them is too much. And there's this term from bodybuilding that's really great, it's, "Abs are made in the kitchen, not the weight room, and not on the cardio machine," and it's fucking true. If you just impose a caloric deficit through moderate activity, good resistance training, you can train your abs or you can not, it doesn't really matter, and your body fat winnows down to a small amount, you're gonna have whatever kind of abs you have shaped down there. Many people have six-packs. Some even have eight-packs. I have, like, a two-and-a-half pack or some shit like that. Oh, God. But it's almost all that calorie deficit, just straight up getting lean. I would love to dispel a mega myth. People who have a high level of body fat who wanna find out how to do some exercise or eat some food that's gonna give them abs, they ain't none for you. It doesn't exist. It's just the layer of fat that's keeping us from seeing your abs. Now, if you do get lean enough and find that instead of those, like, you know, like, hunk romance novel abs, where the woman's, like, grating her face on the guy's abs and he has, like, a unicorn or whatever. I don't read too many romance novels. You've been featured on a few covers, haven't you?

Yeah. Mm.

Against your will. You know, still in a copyright dispute. Nasty legal battle. You may find that instead of having those ravioli abs, you have just kind of, like, semblance of abs, but they're real flat. The cool thing about that is you have a really small waist, which is sweet aesthetically, universally considered attractive. Near universally. There's a community of gay folks that are in the hairy bear culture, that if you have a gut with abs, you're the fucking-

Now we're talking about-

Yes

... your market.

Yes, yes. Bow to your leader, folks.

[laughs]

When I grow my hair out, I can't go around the gay club 'cause I just get, ooh, just pulled in.

Yep.

In any case, um, it's cool. It's a cool look to have just kind of, like, ch, no crazy, crazy abs. But some people are like, "Damn it, I wanted abs abs." For those folks, training abs works exactly the same way as any other hypertrophy training. We covered that in the last video. Two to four times a week training, multiple sets, close to failure, full range of motion, big stretch, increasing loads and reps over time. The same. The planks, the Supermans, all that bullshit, the twists, it does stuff, but if you want big abs, you just go about it like you would get big calves, big forearms, big shoulders, big anything. Consistent resistance training. That's the way to get it. And then don't just train abs during your fat loss plan. If in a year from now you want thick abs, start training them now. The last 12 weeks of that year,