When people see my pictures at the age of 47, I get a lot of questions about what I do specifically for abs. For older men and women abs seem to be the harder of the muscles to see and develop.
If there was an industry secret, I would love to sell it to you but the truth is that I don’t do anything for abs.
Well…that might not be entirely true…
The stuff I do for my abs is the same stuff I do for the rest of my body. I burn body fat and eat in a calorie deficit based on my most recent and most accurate BMR.
We have all heard silliness like “abs are made in the kitchen” and the truth is abs are made by staying out of the kitchen in a calorie deficit.
Hopefully, in explaining this, I can prevent you from falling for any ab workout, ab burning supplements, or any of the other nonsensical, fast-track, things that people will try to sell you.
I cannot tell you how many people I see on the weighted crunch machine at the gym or doing those silly dumbbell side bends. I wish I could find a non-offensive way to approach these people and share with them that the time would be better spent walking on an inclined treadmill than doing another one of these exercises. Maybe they will read my blog 🙂
According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), you’ll need to lower your body fat to about 14 to 20 percent for women and 6 to 13 percent for men in order to see your abs.
The picture of me in this post is at 13.5% body fat. For reference, my Renpho scale has me at 14.7% (close enough). The point here is that in order to see your abdominal muscles, you must cut fat in your midsection, and there is no targeted way to do so (at least that I know of).
My “big ab secret” is in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of my training and recovery e-book, and it isn’t much of a secret.
Simply stated: You need to know your BMR from your scale, multiply that by 1.3 and then eat less than that number of calories every day.
Just to be clear here I will use my Renpho scale stats as an example:
You can see my BMR is 1947.
1947 x 1.3 = 2531 (this is how many calories I can eat a day to maintain this same weight).
If I want to continue to lower my body fat, then I need to consume LESS than 2531 every day.
Ideally, 200-300 calories less, but it is a marathon, not a race, so any day you go less than 2531, is a win.
This is the only “exercise” or “program” for seeing your abs!
I have mentioned this before but it is important to point out again that when you do cardio you should be keeping your heart rate in the “fat-burning zone“. More is not better!
Your fat-burning heart rate can be calculated:
220 – your age = your maximum heart rate.
From there, shoot for 75% of that.
Using my numbers I will give you an example:
220 – 47 (age) = 173 (my max heart rate) x 0.75 (75%) = 129.5 (this is my fat-burning heart rate)
If you are going over this you are working on your heart and limiting your ability to burn fat.
** IF YOU WORK HARDER THAN THAT, YOU ARE BURNING LESS FAT…NOT MORE. **
Do this and you will see your abs start to pop.
