My sis thinks that she can work the lower abs, says she has tons of friends that say the same thing. Can someone show me proof so i can debunk 'em 
If youâre in the UK, go to the BodyWorlds exhibition.
I went there and one of the most interesting things I noticed was that the muscles come in separate layers (with separate attachments) eg a bicep might have 4 individual muscles making up the entire bicep. I canât remember specifics; my intention is to go back there and take shedloads of photos.
Itâs a great exhibition. You can view all the victi⌠volunteers from any angle and can all but poke your head up inside their rib cages - well, the hollow ones, anyway. And there was no restriction on photography.
What I do remember from the exhibition is that there seemed to me to be abs which could, for all intents and purposes, be called lower abs. The same with the upper/lower pectorals which people argue about. Theyâre all there. Bruce Lee thought he invented a new leg muscle but all he did was develop one that most people never use, a minor muscle from a âdormantâ layer.
Most people only use their big muscles, always compensating for the lesser muscles by building up the ones that are already strong. Even body builders and lifters pick and choose what theyâre going to work on. People with physiques like that donât know whatâs hit them when they try holding a qigong posture for just a few minutes.
You have a lot of muscles in your body and thereâs a lot more to them than the bump under your skin suggests.
-David
hereâs a good basic explanation:
http://www.exercisexpress.com/LOWERABS.htm
Iâll find a more scientific source though, as that may be what sheâs looking for. Tonight after bjj Iâll try to find some stuff in my NSCA book if nobodyâs replied by then. The problem is that so many people talk about the lower abs and if you do a simple search for lower abs, you get tons of sites telling you how to work them. Thereâs so much about it available that most people buy into the myth.
also, she can look for herself. tell her to go to google and do a search for âlower abs mythâ
mythical shmythical, 7* 
Where a muscle has more than two ends, it can be used in more than one way, hence the idea of lower abs.
-David
Itâs one muscle.
If she insists otherwise, tell her to flex just her lower abs and have her upper abs remain soft and pliable.
End of story.
And if she still doesnât believe it, go have her read an anatomy book (note: a book called something like âAwesome Absâ is NOT an anatomy book. Give her a medical anatomy book).
IronFist
Psssst⌠check an anatomy book and then ridicule her for her pagan beliefs.
Speaking as a Pagan/Christian/WhateverâŚ
Youâve all been kind in merely ignoring me rather than personally ripping my arguments. Thankyou!
Last night, I loook into a couple of physiology books - inc. Grayâs Anatomy - and I canât see where the idea of a single (ie mono-directional, mono-use) abdominal muscle group comes from. The muscles are labelled as one but they appear to be more complex.
- Biceps, considered one muscle but actually multiple.
- Pectoralis majoris (or whatever) considered one muscle but isnât - there are people with the lower or upper areas developed at the expense of the other.
- Abdominals have many parts and therefore many load-patterns and therefore different exercises will affect different parts of the muscle differently. So what if the whole region tenses to the same degree under strain - the physicis of it is that the only muscles thatâll break are the ones in the line of force with the load - and these are the fibres which will be replaced with more.
This reminds me of the Biologists conundrum of trying to label everything and fit it into boxes. There are constant debates as to whether a particular tree belongs to one genus/species/family or another. Who cares. Is Pluto a planet? Who cares, itâs a rock, Earth is a rock, if itâs too small for your interest then move on.
Labels wonât prove anything; theyâre negotiable and should be adjusted to use. As specialists, we may have to make finer and finer distinctions between things that appear unified at a coarser level.
I do crunches, squat-thrusts, leg-raises to name but a few and this works the abs all over. I donât necessarily say it works the upper and lower - it just works all over.
-David
Muscles are also length specific. Just because you work your muscles at 40%-90% length does not mean it will be strong in the 10% stretch region.
Sorry my anatomy lingo is not up to par.
hence different exercise can work the same group of muscles but feel different.
David,
Thatâs the exact âassumptionâ that is the myth. Different exercises feel like they are loading different parts of the abdominal muscles because of strain placed on the connective tissue. Crunches will feel like they are loading the âupperâ abs because the strain is being placed on the connective tissue on top of the ab wall and the reverse is true for stuff like leg lifts.
As for your biceps example. There are two completely seperate âheadsâ to the bicep. (ie BI - cep⌠guess how many heads the TRI-cep has. I bet you canât⌠
) Each head has a different name. You donât see the same thing along the abdominal wall. It is one muscle and is aptly named with just one name. It isnât broken up into different heads or units. It is all one muscle. When a muscle contracts, the entire muscle muscle contracts the same. Thatâs how muscles work. No ifâs andâs or butâs. Anything else is just a delusion. Maybe you need a physiology book then if you canât put together what you see in the anotomy one.
I just donât see why people wish to remain ignorant. Intuitiveness alone should tell you that the abs are one muscle. Nevermind all that modern medical science hog wash. Itâs like saying that the heart doesnât pump blood through the body. Itâs just rediculous thatâs all.
Cheers Ford - thatâs quite convincing.
To be annoying though, I think Iâm wrong only in the sense that itâs wrong to think of the Earth as flat or the sky as blue.
Youâve convinced me Iâm wrong about the discrete existence of separate heads so take this as an attempt at reconiliatory compromise!
My point is that the location of the strain is the location of the muscle breakage/build-up cycle. If you can have upper-region strain and lower-region strain then thatâs working upper and lower abs respectively.
-David (looking over his shoulder at the precipice)
No biggy. This is just such a recycled topic that I usually donât reply to them, but itâs a slow day at work today. Believe what you want to. As long as you are working your abs and staying in shape, then you already won 99% of the battle, IMO. Speaking scientifically, it is absolutely 100% impossible to build different areas of the same muscle differently. Since you are stressing and imflaming different connective tissue with your exercises, it feels like you are hitting them differently. Also, the abdominal wall, although a major player in the core of the body, isnât the only one. Some âabâ exercises will hit some of the others as well. While you may not be building the âupperâ and âlowerâ abs differently, you may be building the muscles that border them and aid them differently.
Just to chime in quickly with an added pointâŚeven if a muscle group contains multiple heads, this really doesnât reflect the fact that you can isolate each head individually, or more or less. It is the point of attachment that dictates which musclegroups are responsible for whatever work you are performing. This is why you cannot isolate different parts of your chest, the pec major and minor share the same point of attachment, and therefore are both recruited for the lifts you perform. Some musclegroups have multiple points of attachment, such as your shoulder, which you can target the heads differently depending on arm angle, etc.
hm. interesting point, EP. what about triceps? different exercises seem to focus more on a certain one of the three heads. think tricep pulldowns. with the palms facing down, one part seems to be emphasized, but with the palms facing each other, a different part, and with the palms facing up, another different part.
iâm not saying that only one part is used at a time. it just seems certain angles focus more of the tension on one area, while the entire muscle group is still a-workin. is that a connective tissue thing again?
Buddha,
The tricep heads come into play as tension is increased. Most of the work is done by your medial head. The long and lateral heads only come into play as tension is increased. What this means is that youâll need to lift HEAVY weights in order for them to become active. You arenât using heavy weights on a tricep kickback. If you do close-grip, 4" bench press lockouts though, you are. Thatâs why it may seem like different exercises work them differently. BTW, the most visable tricep head is the lateral head, which is one of the lazy pair.
bling bling
There are two debates here.
- There is one ab muscle. Is it possible to perform an excercise that builds or strengthen one of the divisions of it more than another.
Pretty much everybody who knows anything says no because all the heads and attatchments perform the same action.
- Is it possible to perform an excercise that focuses on one head or another of any muscle in the body. Specifically, the pectral, bicep or tricep. note the pectorilis major and minor are two seperate muscles, the so-called upper chest is the clavicular attatchment of the pectoralis major and the lower chest is the sternal attatchment.
Iâm not conviced either way but i think you can. www.exrx.net agrees with me that performing an incline shoulder bench puts more load on the clavicular attatchement than the sternal. This means that the clavicular attatchement is taken closer to failure than it would during a flat bench press. Now if you donât bring the muscle close to failure, it wonât get stronger so if you canât bring the clavicular attatchment close to failure during bench but you can during incline, you will build the clavicular attatchment better by doing the incline press. The reverse logic is true for decline press. This is different to argument 1 because weâre talking about seperate groups of muslce fibres, not diferent fibres in the same group or diferent portions of the same fibres,
Jaws clamped firmly round the abs
The reason for my obstinacy on this point is a simple visualisation that I have for multiheaded muscles.
I imagine a sheet with each corner representing a head. Imagine having 2 people, each pulling on a corner. The regions of strain across the sheet vary in each circumstance and, if pulled hard enough, the sheet tears differently.
Now, why doesnât that apply to the abs?
Obviously, I understand that you canât prove anything to a foolâŚ
-David
David,
Thatâs just now how a muscle functions. A muscle contracts. That is how tou do crunches and leg raises. Your abdominal contracts. When a muscle contracts, every single fiber in the muscle contracts at the same time and at the same rate. Muscles donât think. They canât tell the difference between a crunch and a leg raise. All they known is contract. The only differences in contractions is the amount of tension needed. ie they have to contract harder for some exercises than others. Thatâs it.
Donât try to come up with theories out of thin air. Just read some books on physiology and anatomy. Only every single modern medical text agrees that it is PROVEN that this is how a muscle functions. The world isnât flat. Itâs round you know.
What sorts of motions, in martial arts and in general life, are the hip flexors used for?
Most of the exercises that target the nonexistent âlower absâ seem to actually be targeting the hip flexors. Clearly this isnât going to help you improve your ab strength, but if the hip flexors are used for certain things, clearly itâs not necessarily a bad idea to do âlower abâ exercises, yes?