What’s The Difference Between An Athletic Physique And A Six-Pack Body?

Akash Sehrawat

2 min read | Jan 3, 2019

Hey,

 

An athletic body is functional in nature. What this means is that it’s able to perform real-life activities with relative ease.

 

A Few Examples Are

 

– Climb 10 floors while carrying your infant kid and your wife’s shopping bags with relative ease in case the lift is not working!

 

– Climb a tree if needed.

 

– Play a sport (or any sport) recreationally.

 

– Run to save your life from a ferocious dog!

 

An athletic physique may or may not sport a six-pack (it all depends upon one’s body fat levels. Anything less than 12 percent body fat will give clear visibility of six-pack abs!) Now, when we talk about a six-pack body, basically, what we are referring to is a bodybuilder.

 

This kind of physique is built with only one goal in mind: Aesthetics! A bodybuilder performs a lot of isolated exercises, mainly using machines that emphasize only one plane of motion, the sagittal plane.

 

This causes muscle imbalances, and your muscles become prone to injury. In real life, our muscles are used to working in all three planes of motion: sagittal, frontal and transverse. Yes, there are three planes of motion.

 

1) Sagittal plane is forward or backward.

 

2) Frontal plane is side to side.

 

3) Transverse plane is rotational.

 

Therefore, it becomes imperative to include movements in the frontal and transverse planes as well.

 

Conclusion

 

In the end, it all depends on what your goals are. If you are an athlete (swimmer, boxer, powerlifter etc), you will naturally train according to what your sport demands.

 

Whereas if you desire to become a fitness model or a pro bodybuilder, you need to follow a routine of weight lifting a few times a week, specializing in each body part. In both cases, if your body fat is low enough (less than 12 percent), your six-pack will be visible.

 

If you are a recreational athlete who simply wants to look good on a beach but also wants to become strong and build real-life functional strength, do this.

 

Pick up 5 to 8 functional whole-body exercises involving multiple planes of motion and multiple joints, which mimic real-life activities. Think squat, deadlift, wood chop, and medicine ball side throw (rotational exercises), to name a few.

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About Akash Sehrawat

Akash is a creator of 25+ programs and certificate courses in which more than 200,000 students have enrolled both on Udemy and Fabulous Body's native platform. Akash is also an author of three books that can be found on Amazon. His answers on Quora have gathered more than 12 million views in less than a year.

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