Sixpack and Hourglass body type

kathrinnbauer
kathrinnbauer Posts: 74 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
I still need some time before I could have a visible sixpack, but I am curious right now and I wonder whether I should start to plan my strength training in a way that makes me gain muscle where I want it to be visible later and not to build muscle now where I don't want a huge amount of muscle after the fat is gone. So my question is:
Can a woman maintain or even shape an hourglass figure and a sixpack? Many women with sixpacks have virtually no waist and many women with an hourglass figure don't seem to have a pronounced sixpack.
Do any of you have both? Are their photos of women with both?

Replies

  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    Building muscle is not what makes the muscle visible, it's reducing the layer of fat covering the muscle. You cannot spot reduce body fat.

    Yes, you should be doing resistance training, preferably with a progressive loading program focusing on compound movements.
  • kathrinnbauer
    kathrinnbauer Posts: 74 Member
    I know that increasing muscles does not make them more visible if they are covered by layers and layers of fat.
    But, once you have a body fat percentage of 15 - 20 % it does matter whether you built muscle and where. And I want an impressive sixpack without building up too much muscle between my hips and ribs that my waistline disappears.

    Here are two women with the same body fat percentage, yet the look totally different:
    http://www.leighpeele.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/15-percent-body-fat-female1.jpg

    So, I would want my waist line to come as close as possible to this picture:
    http://www.womens-business-clothes.com/images/DifferentBodyTypes_Hourglass_Laying-PartialBody_300pixelsHT.jpg

    But I also dream of having her abs:
    http://coachcalorie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/six-pack-abs.jpg
  • Leadfoot_Lewis
    Leadfoot_Lewis Posts: 1,623 Member
    I really wouldn't worry about "building up too much muscle". Building muscle as a woman is hard enough, and in reality very, very few women have that issue.

    As far as the hourglass look goes, IMO that's mostly genetics.
  • daniellabella986
    daniellabella986 Posts: 325 Member
    Keep in mind some girls have a natural hourglass shape, so those girls may already be shaped that way before building that physique
  • cafeaulait7
    cafeaulait7 Posts: 2,459 Member
    It depends on what you mean by hourglass, because the actual waist measurement can be small and the woman look more straight through the waist until it gets to the hips. I know that I have a curve that is basically fat that goes from my waist to my hips that I do lose completely at a small BF%. I look straighter in the middle, but my waist measurement is the same. My hips aren't much smaller (muscle), so I still fit the hourglass measurements either way.

    But some women have ribcages, etc, that let them get really slim and still keep an actual curve(of muscle) from waist to hip:

    Amy-Willerton,-I%27m-A-Celebrity-Get-Me-Out-Of-Here.jpg

    [edit: no idea what happened. Here's the link: http://images.ok.co.uk/Kristina Friday 22nd/Amy-Willerton,-I'm-A-Celebrity-Get-Me-Out-Of-Here.jpg ]

    She's got close enough to a 6-pack, I think!

    A lot of that hourglass-curvy-from-the-front look really is often due to fat, though. I like it a lot, but it's so darned hard to have a flat enough lower belly and have that nice (fat-made) curve going on! I'm not talking rolls when I say fat, btw. I just mean it's not made of muscle :)
  • Snow3y
    Snow3y Posts: 1,412 Member
    Strength training won't make you gain if you're not in a surplus.
    You won't see abs until you are a significantly lower bodyfat %
  • kathrinnbauer
    kathrinnbauer Posts: 74 Member
    Thanks for all the answers :)
    I ask because I do gain a lot of muscle when I start with strength training. People comment on it... I am not sure whether I am proud or if it annoys me, but whenever I start weight training I get quite a lot of muscle, so I really don't want to build up too much. I know it sounds weird but I seem to be really predisposed to build up muscle..
    I am close to an hourglass figure now, but I don't know what will happen when I lose the fat as I can't predict where I will lose it. I really don't know if I am genetically predisposed to have one, but I thought that by increasing muscle around the hips and not gaining a lot around the waist I should be able to make it seem like one.
    I guess I really will not gain a significant amount of muscle while on a deficit, but I am curious and it is part of my motivation to look at nice stomachs and think about how mine will look once I lost the extra weight :wink:

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