It’s hard to call which is the favorite, but there’s no doubt that the prize muscles for bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts are big biceps and carved abs. Getting big biceps usually comes easier for most people while they find it frustratingly difficult trying to whip their midsection into shape. There are a number of reasons for this, which I’ll go into with this article.

First of all, it doesn’t matter how many crunches, bends, twists or leg raises you do if you have too much stomach fat, your abs are going to remain buried. Most beginners are surprised to learn that they will usually already have a fairly good set of abs muscles – it’s just they aren’t visible because they are covered in fat.

If you want the easy way to abs – reduce your body fat as far as you can go until your abs start showing. You do so by training your abs to preserve the muscle mass (along with training the rest of your body) and slightly drop calories, and keep carb intake to before and after training, and keep your protein high (fats too).

It’s also important to know that most of the time you see great abs in the magazines or on TV, that is staged: the person being photographed has specifically trained to get themselves that lean for the photo shoot/video/advertisement, and the chances are, most of the time, they are not quite so lean. Having very cut abs constantly is a pretty unrealistic goal unless you really are extremely dedicated in training and diet.

Also the more body fat a person has, the quicker they lose it, therefore the less body fat they have, the harder it becomes to lose it: this really requires dedication and patience, as I’ve said.

So that’s the first issue out of the way.

Training wise, the abs should be trained as any other muscle in the body which you require to grow – in reps and sets (perhaps 15 reps, 3 sets, for example) leaving around 72 hours for them to recuperate. Change the exercises every few weeks to avoid staleness, and, add gradual resistance (i.e. by doing crunches with a plate held onto the chest/head or something) to challenge the abs to grow, so they form deeper grooves and, when coupled with low body fat, form great definition.