Top six-pack mistakes to avoid when building muscle

Achieving six-pack abs isn’t as difficult as it’s often perceived (or marketed) to be. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of cryptic information and dodgy mindsets out there, and it means I see countless people make really simple mistakes.

Luckily, these mistakes are easy to fix. Incorporate the below advice into your abdominal workout and that all-important washboard stomach needn’t be a pain in the belly to achieve...

1. Poor Exercise Selection

A common observation I’ve made over the course of my career is that most men focus incessantly on just a handful of well known abdominal exercises. The abdominal crunch and sit-up are the most commonly used ab exercises among beginners, yet they are inefficient and even potentially dangerous. Both of these exercises flex the spine at its weakest point. Abs are designed to brace the spine, not crunch it – every small crunch you do becomes an ingredient in a recipe for back trouble.

Solution: Drop these spine crunching exercises and focus on movements that work the abdominals in their natural bracing position. I’m not saying crunches don’t work, but there are far better exercises for your abs that just happen to be safer too. Planks offer a great abdominal workout with a multitude of variations. Swiss ball rollouts are another great alternative. Personally, I like to focus on cable rotations, which give my abs a functional workout while allowing me to increase weight load as I gain in strength.

2. No Progression

It’s a curious fact about ab workouts that men very rarely increase the intensity with which they work the muscles. Get a man to bench press over the course of a couple of weeks and he’ll inevitably start trying to display his strength by lifting more and more. Yet the same man will do the same abdominal workout for weeks on end.

I think the general assumption is that all the abs really need are a few crunches. Wrong! Your body will adapt to the exercise after just a few sessions, which means thereafter they'll do little to nothing for you. Your abs require just as hard a workout as any other muscle group, so stop short-changing them with a tired, unchallenging workout regime.

Solution: Periodically progress your abdominal exercises for greater demand. Most popular exercises can be progressed in a number of ways. If you really want to fire up your abdominal workout, venture onto a suspension trainer: the scope for progression here is immense. You don’t know abdominal muscle ache until you’ve woken up the day after suspended pikes on a TRX!

3. Training too Frequently

If you can still feel your last workout, you aren't ready to do another one.

 

One of the most common mistakes people make with exercise in general is buying into the tired logic that more means better. The reality is that gains aren't made in the gym, they’re made as you rest! So be sure to rest your muscles properly. As a rule of thumb, if you can still feel your last workout, you aren't ready to do another one.

Solution: Focus on intense, targeted workouts. I recommend hitting your abs for 10-15 minutes of isolation work one to two times per week. Always allow at least 48 hours recovery before training the muscle again. Combine this with proper sleep and nutrition just as you would after training a larger muscle group.

4. Mistake: Not Enough Focus on Body Composition

Relentlessly training your abdominals will make no difference to your washboard status if you don’t have the right body composition. I’m sure you’ve seen skinny guys who never train with great abs – and guys with huge stomachs who are as strong as an ox. This is all the result of body composition.

Most men I see in the gym have between 15-25pc body fat, with real fitness fanatics at around the 10pc mark. Competitive athletes go way down into the single digits (Bradley Wiggins is believed to have had only 4pc body fat when he won the Tour de France). Realistically, if you want to see your abs, you need to get your body fat below 12pc.

Solution: Use a comprehensive workout program that incorporates full body workouts, fat burning cardio and eat a healthy diet. Avoid processed high sugar foods, aim for a diet high in protein, healthy fats and with moderate carbohydrate intake. This combination will see you in the lower digits in no time.

You can test your body fat percentage by asking a trainer at your local gym do a skinfold test on you (they’ll know what you mean) or by purchasing scales that measure your fat through bioimpedance technology.

5. Reliance on gimmicks

Good food, targeted exercise and adequate recovery will help you progress in building your body.

 

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with advertisements for easy solutions and quick fixes. This is particularly true in the health and fitness industry where the latest overnight solution to the six-pack abs riddle are offered on a daily basis.

Falling into the trap of reliance on gadgets, diet fads or miracle supplements can really hamper your progress. And strain your wallet too!

Two ridiculous examples immediately spring to mind. Do you remember the sticky pads people used to plaster all over their bodies to induce muscle contractions? This was supposed to train your muscles automatically whilst you sat around watching television. Not a great message if you ask me. Picture the image of a man sitting watching daytime television, electronic pads all over his body, convulsing uncontrollably every 3 or 4 seconds as his child walks into the room and asks ‘Daddy what are you doing?’ No self respecting man could possibly bring himself to answer ‘working out’.

And then there’s the sauna belt – for my money, the all time champion of ridiculous fitness gimmicks. The sauna belt went around your waist and heated up, making you sweat, which meant ... well, that you got a bit hot. The idea was to sell people on the fact that sometimes athletes go into a sauna to lose ‘weight’. Sure, that’s true, but they go in to lose water weight to make the scales. They start putting that weight back on as soon as they have their next glass of water.

Solution: Focus on known principles, like good food, targeted exercise, adequate recovery and proper progression. Whilst some supplements can give a slight advantage, they are not to be solely depended upon. Caffeine, for example, can raise metabolism and enhance workout intensity, but it’s clear to see that drinking coffee alone isn’t going to give you rock hard abs!

6. Mistake: Too Much Isolation

Focusing too heavily on your abs and neglecting larger muscle groups because you want a six-pack is short sighted, will give you terrible posture, lead to muscular imbalances, and will ultimately hamper your chances of ever achieving great abs.

Solution: Develop a program that incorporates large compound movements. This will develop overall strength and muscularity, increase testosterone levels (meaning more muscle) and heavily stimulate your abs.