The THICCENING…

“Au contraire Baby. I think you can’t resist me” Austin Powers 1997

This one goes out to all the dudes.

Right then; ‘Abz’. I think I briefly saw mine right about age 15-16 and then they were gone; hidden and out of sight for the subsequent 30 years or so. Chiseled male abdominals have been a prized aesthetic possession certainly for as long I’ve been alive and I admit that I would have loved some even though it’s highly unlikely that my life would have turned out any differently had I done what was necessary to have them. 

I did try. I denied myself meals, ran until I got injured, swam, walked all day in the hills, did sit ups for days and all the rest. But despite my efforts, I’ve always had a wee, soft tummy that refused to go away. Eventually I accepted it and just got on with my life.

I think I had a fairly classic adult male build where I only carried excess fat around my middle and very little on my arms and legs. If allowed to develop unchecked we tend to turn into walking Christmas puddings with pipe cleaners for limbs. I went through much of my adult life with the classic ‘skinny-fat’ or ‘dad-bod’ physique despite a pretty gruelling exercise regime.

Interestingly when I retired from the RAF, I dropped about a stone in bodyweight, largely from greatly reduced alcohol consumption, and weighed in at just over 12 stone. I had set about starting my own business and was running a lot of circuit training, TRX, and studio cycling classes as well as stepping up my resistance training. And yet, despite me being at my lowest adult weight ever with a BF% of less than 15% with lean, sinewy arms and legs there was still no sign of my elusive abs. My neighbours had even quietly raised concerns to my wife that I wasn’t looking well. So, was I still ‘fat’ because I couldn’t see any rippling spartan-like abs?

I think I would need to drop to around 10% body fat to get a glimpse of ab and then quite some way beyond to actually have the coveted ‘Abz’. Maybe I’ll try that as a project in due course…

But, I would like to offer an alternative narrative that you may have heard whispered in dark corners. That perhaps you and I are not fat. We are in fact…under-muscled.

At just over 12 stone and 5 foot 11 inches tall and sporting a 32-inch waist; I did not cut an imposing figure. Even now at 14 stone, I still don’t. But there is a big difference between my two avatars. I have been through the ‘THICCENING’. Let me explain.

Despite all my training and effort, I’m not all that strong. But I’m considerably and measurably stronger and more physically capable than I was as a younger man when I was supposedly in my prime. I’ve mentioned elsewhere about how my weak back and hips worked against me during my military training despite all the physical activity I put myself through to try and change that. But I can look back and understand that long distance running and circuit training just were not up to the task of producing a strong body. They’re great for building muscular and cardiovascular endurance but those weren’t the only adaptations that I was looking for. I needed to be able to bear heavy loads for prolonged periods of time without getting hurt.

In order for that to happen, I needed to target the musculature around my hips and spine and make then strong. Enter the barbell squat and deadlift, progressively and incrementally loaded over time for sets of 5. If you can move an object 20 or more times in a row, in high rep sets, then it’s simply not heavy enough to elicit a specific strength response.

For a novice male lifter, (read more about Novice Training), sets of 5 reps tread the ground between strength and hypertrophy quite nicely. Add in food and sleep and you have a recipe for months of meaningful force production and muscular gainz. But, I’m not talking about the beautiful sculpture of bodybuilding. I’m talking putting bulk mass on the upper legs, butt and midsection; the powerhouse of the human body.

When I went through my Novice Linear Progression, my weak, scrawny waist went from 32 inches to 35 inches 😱. “Oh no Mac” I hear you cry; “That’s awful”. Who could possible want or indeed warrant an INCREASE in waist size? Surely that’s a marker for poor health. Yes, I added a few % points of body fat by eating to support my training and have consistently hovered around the 20% body fat mark since then but the increase in waist size came from muscle; not bad for a knackered veteran.

Specifically the erectors of my spine, abs and obliques had gotten all swole. The steadily increasing demands of squats and deadlifts required the musculature to hold my torso rigid in oder for me to transmit force from the floor and into the bar so I could move it through space and time. The need to move hundreds of pounds of weight for sets of 5 was way more demanding in terms of force production than any number of sit ups or Russian twists could possibly provide.

But won’t that leave you looking a little weird with skinny arms and legs and a wider waist?

Well, these movements weren’t done in isolation as we like to include bench press and overhead press as well as some upper body pulling work like chin ups or rows. They provide the stimulus for greater upper body strength which will build muscle across the chest, shoulders, arms and upper back along the way. That plus some nice quad, hamstring, glute and adductor gainz match the increased waist size, providing a whole neat package.

But what about the chiseled abdominals? You’re quite right; they’re still hidden away but they’re muscles like any other and they are bigger than they were before and they are most definitely there. So having spent time and effort developing your strength performance and making ‘more’ of you, more options are laid out in front of you. Like the choice to do some different work and dial back on your body fat percentage whilst maintaining or improving your performance so that you keep your new and improved jacked up self and maybe even get a glimpse of those abdominal muscles. If you want to do the work...in the kitchen. Most people THINK that they do.

I’ve never felt better in my entire life than when I had built up my squats and deadlifts…even without dem abz. All thanks to the THICCENING.

And now, as I build myself back up post shoulder surgery, the aim is to make more 'Mac' again and perhaps even surpass my previous strength performance. But I wonder if I can handle the work needed for 50 year-old Mac to sculpt some abz? Just because.