Originally posted by Ricardo:
Hey Diesel I know that the fat hides your abdominal muscles. I just had a thought:
Do you think that the natural muscle tone (of an untrained person) who has low body fat would approximate a 6 pack? Basically what I'm saying is a normal guy with low body fat would have a 6 pack look?
Actually now as I think back to when I was pretty skinny (but didn't workout), my stomach was flat but not 6 pack style. I had a very small waist. But the thing is I never knew my body fat level.
So basically what I was wondering is if the level of muscle development in the abs creates the 6 pack or if that is the natural look as you get down to a certain low body fat. For that matter though I didn't see to many pictures of death camp survivors with 6 pack abs.
1. what the fukk is "tone" ?? Chicks and clueless lifters use the word tone. I hate that word. The correct term is muscle mass.
2. if a person is lean enough will have a six pack, ab work just pronounces it a bit more by bringing the muscles "up" out of the abdominal wall a bit more.
3. there's a difference b/w skinny and lean. In your case and the death camp survivor cases.. you were skinny, but you didn't have a lot of mass.. so even tho you look skinny, your bf levels were still high enough where you couldn't see clear ab definition.
4. In the death camp survivor case.. your body will first metabolize muscle for survival before it hits the fat stores. The fat is the last thing it will tap into.
Why? b/c muscle, which is composed of protein (only takes the body 4 calories of energy to burn, while fat takes 9 calories to burn.. the body being an efficient, adaptive mechanism will continue to burn the easier source (the muscle) until it is forced to tap into its reserves.. (the fat)
D
