You’re getting discouraged, and it’s not surprising, because you have worked on those six pack abs for ever, and they are still not defined. How many more crunches do i have to do to get them developed enough to show as a great set of six pack abs?
First of all, you are not the only one that this has happened to, there are a lot of people in this situation, so don’t give up yet, and with a few adjustments, your abdominals and six pack will be defined very soon. Even with the best of intentions, which can be seen by the number of crunches we do every day, not every one can get their perfect abs to show. You feel that your abs are way stronger, but they still don’t show, so what exactly is happening? Well, first of all you need to to make absolutely sure that it is your abdominal muscles that you are targeting in your exercises, an also check that you are not rushing them. For many exercisers, it is the number they can do in a fixed time that is important, but that lowers the level of the exercise. To be more beneficial, each muscle contraction should be held for a few seconds, and if you are rushing to beat the latest record of number of the crunches in two minutes, then you cannot do this, and the exercises will not be as successful for you. So slow the exercises you are doing, and improve the quality of your exercises, and any other workouts you do that target the abdominal muscles.
The next thing you need to do is to discover what your body fat ratio is - you will be able to do this on the weighing machines at the gym if your bathroom scales don’t tell you. This number should be around 12, but if yours is much higher than this, then that confirms why your six pack abdominals are not showing. The body fat ratio is an indicator to inform you how much body fat you have, and the bigger the number, the more layers of fat you have. The more fat you have, the more layers of fat are covering your abdominal muscles, so provided you have been doing your exercises the right way, your abs will be well defined but just hidden by too much fat.
Okay, if too much is the cause of your abs to not be defined as great 6 pack abdominals what are your options? You obviously need to lose some of those layers of fat, and abs exercises alone will not do this for you. You must do some cardio exercises, to lose some weight. Now this doesn’t automatically mean that you have to work even longer in the gym each day. You can probably spend less time on your abs crunches, with more time doing cardio. If you can eat a little less, you will be well on your way to losing some fat. Make sure you are eating a healthy diet, and not over doing the alcohol. Occasional drinks are fine, but drinking alcohol on a regular basis is just providing your body with too many unneccessary calories.
So, to conclude, do your exercises appropriately, lower your body fat ratio and your 6 pack abdominals will be defined and showing like those on others you’ve been jealously watching.