Will training your abs help you display a prominent six pack?
Will training your abs help you display a prominent six pack? Not unless you’re in a caloric deficit. In fact, there’s even research to show this. More on that below.
In a 6-week study presented in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers split 24 sedentary, men and women into two groups. All subjects were weight stable for the last 6 months before the start of the study. Subjects also maintained their diet throughout the study, which was assessed after the 6 weeks. So essentially, they were eating enough to maintain their weight.
The difference between groups was that one served as the control. So they didn’t have much to do except what they normally would before the start of the study. Basically, they carried on as usual. However, the other group performed 5 workouts a week consisting of 7 abdominal exercises (i.e., sit ups, side bends, leg lifts, oblique crunches, stability ball crunches, stability ball twists and floor crunches), which were performed for 2 sets of 10 repetitions. Yep, that’s a lot of ab training!
Before and after the study, the researchers took the subject’s anthropometric measurements (i.e., body weight, body fat percentage, android fat percentage, android fat, abdominal circumference and abdominal skinfold). (Note: Android fat is a measure of fat around the abdomen and trunk region.) They also had subjects perform as many crunches as they could manage.
What they found was that there was no significant changes in any of the anthropometric measurements for either group. However, the ab training group was able to perform significantly more crunches by the end of the study when compared to the control group.
One flaw with the study is that the researchers relied on food logs from the subjects to assess total caloric intake. That is, you would think that the experimental group would have burned more calories with all the ab training, which would have lead to a calorie deficit, but they may have simply consumed more calories than originally thought. Regardless, the take-home message is clear: If you’re looking to display a washboard stomach then all the crunches in the world aren’t going to show off your abs unless you’re in a caloric deficit.
And now you know. 
:-)
-Coach Nate
For more information:
Vispute, SS et al. The effect of abdominal exercise on abdominal fat. J Strength Cond Res. 2011. Sep;25(9):2559-64.