Overworking your abdominal muscles? You may be doing more harm than good to your health and appearance.
Look at the cover of nearly every men’s magazine and what do you see?
10 Ways to Get Amazing Abs!
The 8 Superfoods You Need for Perfect Abs!
5 Six-Pack Ab Moves!
Abs! Abs! Abs!
While women’s magazines get a bad rap for creating body discontent, many men’s magazines are just as bad. It’s great to be healthy. Moving our bodies, strengthening them and feeling good in our skin is a good thing. So why am I suggesting we all ditch the abs obsession?
Men’s bodies (and increasingly, women’s bodies as well) are not prized for where they are soft, but where they are hard, lean and “cut.” The core of your body is amazingly important—but not because of how taut and defined your abdominal muscles are. Your abdomen, or “core,” is central to the way you deal with life and react and respond to challenges in a way that is beyond your rational thinking. Being harder is not always the best goal.
1. Strength coupled with flexibility is healthier than rigidity—physically and emotionally.
While strong and flexible abdominal muscles help support the low back, overworked abs can flatten and damage the lumbar curve (the natural curve of the lower back). While many women have a noticeable curve to their lower back, men often tend to have less of a curve to the low back to begin with. Adding additional stress to the low back by overworking the abs can distort your posture and cause ongoing back pain and problems. In extreme cases, overwork and rigidity of the abs can lead to “hunchback” or kyphosis of the spine. For most people, a balance of strengthening and flexibility is the healthiest approach to caring for the core. Some elite athletes may wish to minimize flexibility to improve swimming or running abilities, but for most of us, balance is the key. Having a six-pack doesn’t seem worthwhile if your back is in constant pain along with it!
A regular practice of yoga is a great way to round out other exercise regimens and adds flexibility as well as strength to your core. Even learning a few simple postures to do each day can help in terms of doing deep, belly breathing and learning a new way of working with your core strength.
2. Your guts are important for more than their muscle definition.
We talk about it casually—trusting our gut—but it’s more accurate than we are aware of. Research into the enteric nervous system has taught the medical community that this innate “gut wisdom” is more than just an expression. Your digestive tract contains 100 million neurons—more than the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system. Recent research has revealed that 90 percent of the nerve transmission that goes on in this area brings messages from the gut to the brain, rather than the reverse as originally assumed. What this means for you and I is that instead of just relying on our brain to tell those stomach muscles to stay taut and toned, our bodies want to send messages from our guts to our brains to keep us safe and healthy.
Some researchers refer to this enteric nervous system as the “second brain.” If our constant focus on this area of the body is increased hardness and rigidity, we may actually work against a powerful sensitivity. When we are relaxed and listening to our bodies, it’s easy to notice a tightening in the stomach when something makes us uncomfortable or seems off. This intuition is a gift that we often override and over think. Tuning in here instead of just toning up can help in our relationships and for our general survival. Think of the times that you avoid a certain area or make that split second decision because you just know it’s the right thing to do. Those split second things that we know without conscious knowing are the result of listening to our enteric nervous systems. The wisdom going on inside your belly is far more important than how ripped the muscles above it are.
3. You are more than the sum of your parts.
For years, women’s magazines have focused on the three Bs: boobs, bellies and butts. How to make them bigger, smaller, higher, tighter, perkier. I have never met any person—male or female—who I thought would be more beautiful or a better person if one body part was different. We need to let go of these fixations and embrace our collective beauty.
When I look at male beauty, it’s the sum total of everything from the way his eyes widen when he’s talking about something he’s passionate about, to the elegant strength and stubble of his jaw, to the bend and curve of muscle and sinew throughout his back, to the small bit of softness at his belly when he’s relaxed. Just as the beauty of a woman is an amalgam of everything from her scent, to her posture, to her laugh—male beauty is far more than the “perfection” of one body part.
In our bodies, as in our minds, flexibility and a balance of softness and strength goes a long way towards physical and emotional health. Take good care of your beautiful belly!
Read more of Kate Bartolotta’s men’s health column, Body Wisdom, on The Good Life.
Image credit: antmoose/Flickr
Actually, abs (core) is very important in all sports and martial arts. If you don’t have strong core, you wouldn’t be great at any sports and martial arts. And I don’t agree that women don’t put emphasize on body parts. Yes six pack abs mostly are just a novelty and not many women find its a turn on. But lets take a look at strong shoulder and arms. Most women I know find a strong shoulders and arms sexy. Because its a sign of masculinity just like boobs and hips/asses are sign of femininity for women. The main difference between… Read more »
You make many good points in your article, but the fact of the matter is, 6 pack abs on a guy turn women on! At my age, I’ll never see that in the mirror (Worked real hard last year in the gym and I think I saw 2 of them) Most every young guy in my gym however, is trying to build that 6 pack. Why? A while ago I was watching the news and a Female reporter was interviewing a Spanish language station soap opera hunk. Now, this guy is known for his abs and when the reporter asked… Read more »
You know, I think this is kind of like guys and big fake boobs. It’s novel. You’re going to look, because they’re there. There are a small percentage of people who really fetishize them, but by and large, most women are interested in the whole person and not obsessed with a body part.
When you’re talking about a long term relationship that’s true. However, when you’re trying to be NOTICED by the opposite sex (or the same sex if that’s your bag) and every survey done with women rates abs # 1 on the list of physical turn ons (and it is beach season here in the northeast) the young ones in my gym are hogging time on all the ab equipment! I read an article that sort of shocked me at first , but when I thought about it it actually made some sort of sense. It said that steroid abusers ,in… Read more »
Let me put it this way. There ‘s been numerous articles on this site , as well as responses, by women stating that they need to feel desired by their partners, or even potential suitors. that’s why they spend Billions on cosmetics, get their bodies lazered and waxed as well as other assorted unpleasant things. So physical attraction does play a part in almost every relationship,agreed?Now, is it beyond the realm of the senses to believe that men want to be desired also? After all, my wife of almost 38 years has said to me that the first thing she… Read more »
Now that’s an article right there re: the steroid use. Scary and sad!
Physical attraction, absolutely. But does every woman need a man to have a “six pack” to feel attracted to him? No, just like not all men want a woman with big fake boobs (as per my analogy earlier).
Fake boobs, nah. they sometimes look like tumors, ugh! Real ones however are nice( Wife’s got an endowment there 1)
Six-pack abs are too limiting, in my opinion. I have a keg instead of a six-pack. If there’s a body part called the “greater omentum,” then it should be large enough to justify its name….
Laugh at my gut all you want, but when the ship sinks, I’ve got natural buoyancy, and you muscled men will have to tread water.
I like the spirit and most of the letter of what you’ve written. I have had a very different experience where people’s bodies are concerned, though. I have an ashtetic sense for men and women, and often times I see a part of a person that would come closer to that asthetic with a small change here or there. My asthetic is a pretty common one, although I’m sure some would disagree. None of which is to say that I’d ever mention to anyone how they impact my asthtic sense, even if asked. I don’t think my asthetic preferences matter… Read more »
As long as society remains in judgement of people’s appearance – even if it’s people you don’t know or care about – people will try to change that.
I was always pudgy growing up. Not fat, but not in shape or “toned”. I decided to end that last year and now I am well on my way to look good through a combination of running, weightlifting and DDP Yoga. It’s done wonders for my confidence and overall well-being. There’s no empty feeling here at all, it’s completely great!
one the many strange things about this species.
an upright species where the abdominal muscles do not stay taut through the lifespan. would have thought this would have been a core muscle group that would have altered at the first stages of bipedaldom.
why are hu’mans so badly designed. after reaching maturity, other ‘longlived’ species like chimps , elephants, dolphins, hold their form. their bodies dont continue to keep on changing as markedly as humans do.
kangaroos, another upright species, can even retract their bloody testicles.
Interesting take on it, James! Thanks for reading.
even as a child, people said i saw things differently
hehe.
kate im glad you enjoyed my comment, as after pressing post, i did wonder if i had presented ‘my weirdness’ too early in the comment thread
http://sixpackobsession.tumblr.com/
Human bodies aren’t “badly designed.” We may have the most perfectly designed bodies on the planet, which would explain, in part, human’s rise to dominance over the animal kingdom. The problem, from a physical standpoint, is that our bodies were built for survival; but in Western civilized cultures, survival until at least middle-age is practically guaranteed barring some tragic accident. There are many parts of the world where humans retain impressive physical strength well into their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Westerners’ comparatively terrible bodies are a side-effect of our advanced technology. In our countries, machines do much of the work… Read more »
This sounds a bit like the Adam and Eve story snuck in through the back door. Humans do seem to be well-adapted to the planet, at least the state of the planet as it stands now. Homo sapiens is still an incredibly young species, though, so the jury is still out on its long-term greatness. Bacteria seem to be the dominant life-form on the planet, and that will probably not change anytime soon. Humans do have some unusual “design flaws” not often found in other animals, though. For one thing, because of the shape and size of our vocal folds… Read more »