Go to any gym, and you’ll see a big percentage of members at any given time tirelessly working their abs in the hopes of getting the elusive six pack. Go to any home in the U.S., and you’ll find many of them have some kind of ab machine, gadget, and/or tape that was bought with the promise of a flat stomach, wash-board abs, etc. The question is, does working your abs give you abs? In other words, does performing ab exercises burn the fat covering your abs? In a word, NO.

A recent study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that the effect of abdominal exercises on abdominal fat was zero. 14 men and 10 women were randomly chosen to be in one of 2 groups: control group (CG) or abdominal exercise group (AG). The AG performed exercises for 6 weeks.

In conclusion, abdominal exercise training was effective to increase abdominal strength, but was not effective to decrease various measures of abdominal fat. The information from this study can help people to understand that abdominal exercise alone is not sufficient to reduce waistline or subcutaneuos fat.

J Strength Cond Res 25(9):2559-2564,2011