eli5 Understanding how low body fat percentage works for abs ?
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Basically your muscles being visible are based on two things: how big they are, and how much fat there is covering them. So even if you have really strong abs through lots of exercise, it’s easy for your belly fat to cover them up, so you need to lose your belly fat.
Body fat % is basically how much of your body weight is fat. Unfortunately, doing ab exercises won’t specifically burn the fat that covers your abs – you can’t really target what specific part of your body fat you want to lose with exercise. You need to keep losing your total body fat *until* you lose your belly fat, basically.
Strengthening your ab muscles enough will make them show up “sooner”, as if they’re big enough they can show up through some amount of fat, but basically you need to be at a low enough total body fat percentage for your ab muscles to not be covered by fat.
In general, humans tend to carry subcutaneous fat in their midsection. The fat exists on top of the muscle and underneath the skin. Working out your abs can help build the muscle, but you won’t have that visible definition if there’s a substantial layer of fat on top of your abs. Having low body fat as a whole means you’ll likely have less fat on your midsection, allowing for visible ab definition.
I’ll add that you can’t force your body to reduce the fat in your stomach by doing ab exercises, you have to eat well and be active(not necessarily just exercising, but living an active lifestyle) in order to reduce your overall body fat
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