Every spring the same thing happens. People decide this is the year they finally get abs. They start doing crunches. They cut carbs. They buy a fat burner. By August they’re roughly where they started, with a lighter wallet and a vague sense that their body just isn’t built for it.
It is. The problem isn’t your body — it’s the information.
Here are the myths that are actually holding you back.
1. Crunches Will Get You a Six Pack
Perhaps the most stubborn myth in fitness. You can see people doing crunches year after year with nothing to show for it, and still the advice persists.
Crunches build the abdominal muscles. They do not remove the fat sitting on top of them. Those are two completely different problems, and no amount of crunches solves the second one. If your abs are covered in fat, they will stay covered in fat regardless of how many crunches you do — you’ll just have stronger abs hidden under there.
There’s also a better class of exercises for building the midsection than crunches. Hanging leg raises, Russian twists, reverse crunches — these burn more calories and build the midsection more completely. Crunches are finishing work, not foundation work.
2. You Have to Eliminate Carbs and Fat
This makes logical sense on the surface and is completely wrong in practice. The theory is that fewer carbs and fats means less body fat. The reality is that your body runs on both, and cutting them out completely makes you tired, weak, and inefficient at the most basic daily tasks — which means worse training, not better.
There’s a difference between fast-digesting carbs that spike insulin and slow-digesting carbs like oats, whole grain bread, legumes, fruits and vegetables. The second group won’t pack on body fat. The same logic applies to fats — healthy fats are essential, not optional.
Replace the junk, don’t eliminate entire macronutrients. Adjust portions to your goals and move on.
3. Spot Reduction Is Real
This idea — that you can burn fat from a specific area by targeting it with exercises — is completely false, and it’s been false for decades, and people still believe it.
Fat loss is not site-specific. When you lose weight it comes off throughout your entire body, in an order largely determined by genetics. Some areas come first, some last. No exercise changes that order. Doing crunches will build the muscle underneath the belly fat. It will not burn the belly fat.
The only thing that burns belly fat is being in a calorie deficit long enough for your body to get there. Everything else is just choosing which muscles grow while you wait.
4. Genetics Are Everything
It’s your body fat percentage that prevents your abs from showing — not poor genetics. Genetics determine where your body stores fat and the actual shape of your abs, but not your ability to lose the fat covering them.
There is no such thing as a person who is genetically predestined to be unable to build their abs. We all have them. We all have to lose fat and train hard to make them show — some more than others, yes — but nobody was born with a sculpted six pack either.
What genetics actually control: the shape of your abs once they’re visible, and which areas of your body hold fat last. What genetics don’t control: whether you can get lean enough to see them. That part is on you.
5. Exercise Is All You Need
People have a tendency to believe that the harder they work out, the more likely their abs are to show up. So they train harder, add more ab work, and wonder why nothing is changing.
The training is not the problem. The diet is.
Being able to see a well-defined six pack has very little to do with how many ab exercises you do. It has everything to do with body fat levels. You can train abs perfectly and eat badly and have nothing to show for it. You can eat well, be in a consistent calorie deficit, do compound lifting, and watch your abs appear without a single dedicated ab session.
Both matter. But if you’re doing one without the other, diet is the one to fix first.
6. You Work Out, So You Can Eat Whatever You Want
Some people can get away with a bad diet. They move a lot — physically demanding jobs, active lifestyles — and they tend to have a faster metabolism. For them, training does offset a lot of dietary sloppiness. But let’s be honest: that’s not most people.
The majority of gym goers don’t move nearly enough outside the gym to burn all the calories they eat. An hour of training doesn’t cancel out a day of poor eating. Using the gym as a license to eat junk is one of the most common reasons people train consistently for months and have nothing to show for it. They’re working hard and eating back everything they burned, plus more.
If your diet is loose, tighten it before adding more training. The training is fine. The eating is the problem.
7. You Can’t Get a Six Pack Without a Fat Burner
Fat burners are not targeted to the abdominal area. Nothing is. As covered above, you cannot direct where your body loses fat. A fat burner might help you reduce overall body fat slightly when stacked on top of a proper diet and training program. It will not selectively burn belly fat, and it will not do anything meaningful without the diet and training doing the heavy lifting first.
You don’t need one to get abs. You need a calorie deficit and enough consistency to see it through.
7. Training Abs Every Day Gets You There Faster
Training abs every day will get you overtrained abs, not a six pack. Just like every other muscle, the abs need to recover from training. Real growth happens during rest, not during the session itself.
People usually treat abs as assistance work — hitting them every training day or whenever there’s time left over. That’s not how they should be trained. They’re a small muscle group, which means they recover faster than your back or legs. But faster recovery is not the same as no recovery needed.
Two to three times per week is the right frequency. The fact that your abs aren’t sore the next day doesn’t mean they weren’t stimulated — it means they’ve adapted, and that’s a good thing.
8. High Volume Is the Fast Track
More sets, more reps, more exercises — the assumption being that grinding out more work produces faster results. You’ll see people doing thirty sets of crunches in a single session thinking they’re doing something. They’re not.
Train your abs the way you’d train any other muscle group. Numerous studies have shown that abs respond better to a slightly higher rep range than most muscles, but that doesn’t mean endless volume. For optimal results, aim for 8–12 sets per session made up of 3–4 different movements. Do those sets properly, with real focus on the contraction, and then stop.
Adding reps and sets beyond that point doesn’t produce more muscle — it produces more fatigue with diminishing returns.
9. Weight Training Will Damage Your Abs
A lot of people think training abs with weights will somehow overstress them or create a blocky, overdeveloped midsection. Neither is true.
Training abs with added resistance strengthens them and builds definition. If anything, weighted ab work — cable crunches, weighted decline sit-ups, ab wheel rollouts — produces better results than bodyweight-only training because it applies progressive overload, the same principle that makes every other muscle grow.
The practical tip: train weighted ab exercises in the 15–20 rep range. Heavy enough to be challenging, high enough in reps to hit the endurance quality that abs respond to. Don’t be afraid of the weight.
10. Ab Machines Are the Secret Weapon
They’re not — not because machines are bad but because the machine isn’t the variable. Effort, progressive overload, and body fat percentage are the variables. A cable crunch machine is an effective tool when used properly. It’s also a way to go through the motions while feeling productive.
What gets overlooked is the supporting musculature — the core, the lower back, the stabilizers that hold everything together. Compound movements like squats, deadlifts and bench press train those heavily. When you deadlift heavy, your abs are bracing under serious load. When you squat, your entire midsection is working. People who build strong, visible midsections typically do a lot of compound lifting alongside their direct ab work — the compound lifts are doing more ab work than most people realise.
Focus on activating a bigger area of muscles that support the abs. The machine is just one tool in that process.
11. Cardio Is the Only Way to Burn Belly Fat
If you ask most people how to get abs, they’ll say cardio. And cardio does burn calories. But it’s not the only way, and for a lot of people it’s not even the most effective way.
A solid weight training program combined with a calorie deficit can match or beat what steady-state cardio produces for fat loss — and it builds the muscle underneath that makes the abs actually worth seeing when the fat comes off. If you take up weight training over cardio, you may need to reduce calories slightly to compensate for the calories you’re no longer burning on the treadmill, but the results are comparable.
HIIT specifically has been shown to enhance fat loss far more than low-intensity steady-state cardio, and in a fraction of the time. It boosts metabolism like nothing else — your body continues burning calories after the session ends. If you’re going to do cardio, make it count.
And if you genuinely hate steady-state cardio, know that it’s not mandatory.
Related: 5 Forms Of Cardio For Fast Fat Loss
12. There’s a Shortcut
There isn’t one. There has never been one. The physiques you see online are the result of hard training, strict diets, and in many cases years of consistent work. Some people respond better than others — genetics are real — but nobody skipped the work.
Maintaining a great physique isn’t something you do for eight weeks before summer. It’s a year-round habit. The people who have visible abs in July also had visible abs in February because they didn’t stop in October.
When you stop looking at others and wondering why they’re luckier, and start planning clean meals instead, things start moving. Cut processed food, alcohol and late-night eating. Add more quality protein, complex carbs and healthy fats. Create a 500–600 calorie daily deficit. Do 3–4 light cardio sessions per week — 30 minutes, cycling, walking, swimming. Train abs properly two to three times a week with exercises that actually challenge them.
Do that consistently and you’ll see real results in 2–3 months. Not overnight, not in two weeks — but 2–3 months of consistent work will show you what your body is actually capable of.
That’s the shortcut. It just doesn’t look like one.
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