Growing your biceps is one thing. You do a bunch of curls, you eat the right things, and…voila. (OK, no, it’s not that simple. But it’s easier than getting a visible six-pack.)
International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA)-certified personal trainer Devon Spears understands this better than most. Last week, Spears released a video on his YouTube channel to give training, nutrition, and recovery tips about how to get abs. I sat down with Spears to get deeper insight into how transmasculine athletes in particular can navigate this tricky endeavor. Here’s what he had to say:
Training for a Six-Pack
As a transmasculine athlete, Spears is intimately familiar with the trial-by-fire that is trying to build out your abs. To help his clients build abs most efficiently, Spears tends to stay away from bodyweight exercises for abs. While there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned crunch, it’s hard to apply progressive overload — to make it harder over time.
Instead, Spears guides his clients toward the following exercises:
- Cable Crunches
- Machine Crunches*
- Ab Wheel Rollouts
- Lying Leg Raises
*Now, there’s a big caveat to machine crunches, he explains in his video. Most of these machines don’t allow for spinal flexion — which is what it sounds like, i.e. curling or flexing your spine forward. But in a pinch, if that’s what you’ve got access to for adding weight to your ab exercises, you can go with them.
Don’t just add weight for the sake of it, though, Spears cautions.
It’s never worth it to add weight if the reps are getting sloppy.
ISSA-certified CPT Devon Spears
Keep your form in check and make sure the work is coming mostly from your abs, not your hip flexors. You can do that by actively pulling your belly button into the lower portion of your stomach.
Nutrition for a Six-Pack
You know the old adage: abs are built in the kitchen. So, the next section of his video focuses on nutrition.
Spears points out in his post that getting visible abs is not just about your body fat percentage like a lot of people think with ab training. Spears talks directly to followers of all body types and sizes, explaining “how to see your abs, whether you’re thicc or skinny.”
Contrary to what people might assume, you don’t always need to be in a caloric deficit to help reveal your abdominal muscles.
“When you’re [saying], ‘I’m really low body fat, but for some reason I can’t see my abs,’ it might even make you look like you have a higher body fat than you actually [do],” Spears explains. “You want to make sure you apply a caloric increase. You wouldn’t expect to build your biceps up when you’re eating less food; you can’t expect to build your abs up when you’re eating less food.”
Spears recommends a bulking phase where you’ll gain a little bit of body fat along with building your muscle mass. That way, if you focus on reducing your body fat levels in the future, your abs — having been built up by your training and caloric increase — will be more visible.
View this post on Instagram
[Read More: How to Bulk: The Ultimate Guide to Gaining Size]
Spears says that it generally takes longer than a month or two to build your abs out, so be patient and persistent during your bulking phase.
For people who are at a higher weight, Spears says that “because you have those extra nutrients stored in your body fat, it’s the same idea as someone who has to bulk to lose muscle. So it’s a positive way to look at it…as long as you don’t crash diet yourself, you can build muscle while losing fat.“
[Read More: Best Protein Powders: We Tested them All So You Don’t Have To]
Extra Advice for Transmasculine Athletes
As a transmasculine trainer, Spears specializes in helping transmasculine athletes grow their confidence (and their muscles) in the gym. Still, there’s not much of a difference between ab training for trans and cis athletes. “Abs are trained through spinal flexion, which is the same for anyone,” Spears tells me over email.
Still, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can impact your training and nutrition. As a result, being on testosterone (T) as a transmasculine person can change how you approach building your abs. Here’s how Spears breaks it down for me:
“The distinction to be made here for non-T homies versus those of us who are on T is that testosterone helps with recovery. So a less aggressive approach to dieting would be useful in the long term to avoid fatigue and muscle loss for non-T athletes.”
Common Mistakes During Ab Training
In his line of work, Spears sees a lot of athletes making the same mistakes over and over again in an attempt to reveal their abs. He explains in his video:
A big mistake I see from people is that a lot of people are too freaking aggressive with their dieting phase.
People who enter a dieting phase “lose a lot of the muscle they built up when they’re bulking.” So make sure you’re paying attention to these dos and don’ts.
- Do continue training with the same intensity if you’re in a “dieting” phase (which a lot of people don’t). Your caloric deficit should be small enough that it won’t impact your energy levels, and you want to maintain your muscle mass.
- Don’t slash your calories too much, too soon. Be gradual, only decreasing your caloric intake by a couple hundred calories. That might just mean making a few small swaps in your nutritional habits (like using more vinegar and less olive oil in your salad dressing).
- Do be patient: how long it takes to show your abs “varies for every single person.” Some people Spears works with, he explains, can see their abs after three months, while others take two years.
- “Don’t try to rush the process by cutting calories drastically or training seven days a week or training abs two times a day,” Spears advises. “You’re going to overtrain yourself…It’s going to ruin your relationship with food; it’s going to ruin your relationship with training.”
Slow and steady, Spears explains, is indeed how you win the abs race.
But the biggest mistake people of all genders make when training abs is mental:
The biggest f*** up that you can do is compare yourself to other people.
“A huge mental component to keep in mind is that everyone has varying levels of body fat that is healthy for them,” Spears emphasizes to me. “If someone can only see their abs at a low body fat percentage but they feel terrible due to restrictive eating, then it isn’t worth it.”
Trans athletes in particular may be susceptible to the cultural pressures of restrictive eating and self-comparisons to other athletes. Indeed, research suggests that trans people are more likely than our cisgender peers to develop eating disorders. (1)
Spears offers some reassurances to fellow transmasculine athletes, reminding his community that everyone’s body is different — and that’s OK.
“It’s natural to hold body fat in the midsection, and it also seems that being AFAB (assigned female at birth), many of us hold body fat above or on our hips.” It’s understandable that this body shape activates many transmasculine people’s gender dysphoria. Still, Spears assures me over email that this does not make transmasculine people less of who we are.
“Understanding that cis folks who are masculine also have this body fat should diffuse the idea that all men need to have abs, and subsequently that we are less valid for not having them.”
More on Ab Training
If Spears’ video and additional advice for transmasc athletes have you in the mood for more ab training content, we’ve got you covered. Here are some more BarBend pieces to check out.
- The Best Core Exercises for Strength, Plus Core Workouts
- The Best Bodybuilding Ab Workout for Your Experience Level
- The Best Upper Ab Exercises for a Stronger Core
- The Best Lower Ab Exercises Out There (Seriously)
References
- Rasmussen SM, Dalgaard MK, Roloff M, Pinholt M, Skrubbeltrang C, Clausen L, Kjaersdam Telléus G. Eating disorder symptomatology among transgender individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Eat Disord. 2023 May 26;11(1):84.
Featured Image: @dvnsprs / Instagram
