So you are sick of your big tummy and want to get that awesome flat 6 pack abs. You have diligently been doing hundreds of sit ups and crunches every day so that you can own a flat tummy with defined abs muscles and yet that six pack remained elusive. You are now on the verge of giving up. Why is that so?

Well, if it is any consolation at all, you are not alone. The irony is that your abs muscle is one of the easiest muscles to build and yet most people have difficulty in developing that 6 pack abs.

Here is the simple truth. The only reason is that your tummy fat is covering your abs muscles. Period! Your six abs will not show up if you have a body fat ratio of more than 12%. If you want rock hard and defined abs muscles to show, your body fat ratio percentage must be in a single digit.

The more tummy fat you burn off, the more defined your abs will be. So if you have tummy fat, then forget about abdominal exercises and start working off the belly fat first.

That said, there is another reason why your abs are not showing up even though you have low body fat percentage. Again, there is a simple explanation is that you are doing the wrong exercises and working out in bad form.

Don't believe me? Ok, then let us take a look at some of the more common abs exercises, the sit up and the leg raisers. Everyone seems to be executing these two supposedly abdominal exercises not knowing that these exercises are really inferior exercises.

Oops. I see incredulous look on some of your faces. Ok, try this then. When you do your sit up or leg raisers, place your palms on your hip area connecting to your thigh and perform the exercises. Tell me what do you feel? Ahhh, see what I mean? Those muscles there are doing most of the work. Those are your hip flexor muscles. Since your hip flexors are doing most of the work, how can you develop your abs effectively?

So you say, from now on I will do crunches instead. Well, I have another surprise for you. Most people perform their crunches wrongly too. Think about it. Why is this exercise called "the crunch"? It is because you must squeeze your abs and contract hard so that you are crunching them. Not just crunching up and down like a worm in spasm.

In order to squeeze your abs hard, you have to curl up like a prawn and breath out all the air in your lungs at the top position and then squeeeeeeeze the muscles so hard that you feel a burn. That will take a few seconds to crunch out all the air before you lower to the start position again. So, if you have been doing hundreds of crunches everyday with little result to show, now you know why.

In fact, it is almost impossible for the average guy to do tens of properly performed crunches and not to say hundreds of them. The same squeezing principle applies to other abs exercises too.

There are many more tips to get a flat tummy with defined six pack abs to show. However, just get the gist of the article right and you will definitely see progress.