Abs will always be considered the physical manifestation of fitness and the main motivation behind training for many people. Yes, having a big chest and arms is cool and all but nothing beats those aesthetic-looking ripped abs. Not only will it impress everybody around you, but it’s also solid proof of your hard work and dedication to staying fit and healthy. If you’ve never had abs or met someone that has them, it’s normal to have all sorts of questions like “how does touching abs feel like?”, “are abs hard or soft?”.
When abs aren’t under tension and relaxed, they’re relatively soft and malleable to the touch. However, when they’re under tension and contracted they’re significantly hard and feel solid to the touch. This only applies if the abs are visible due to a low body fat percentage.
In this article, we’ll talk more in-depth about if abs are hard or soft, and how touching them feels.
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Are Abs Hard or Soft?
Since I had abs for as long as I can remember (due to my low body fat percentage), the answer to this question will be pretty easy and straightforward. However, to not give a biased opinion about my abs, I decided to ask three of my female friends to feel my abs and tell me if they were soft or hard (I don’t have the best abs in the world but they were enough to conduct this little experiment).
Beforehand, I told them that I would relax my abs until they get a feel for them and then contract them afterward. Here is what each of them said:
- Girl 1: They felt really soft like touching a belly when they were relaxed but I could still feel the lines that separate the abs a little bit, but when you contracted them, they instantly became hard and I could feel every ab.
- Girl 2: They were soft at first but got pretty hard afterward.
- Girl 3: At first, I couldn’t feel any difference, it was the same as touching a normal belly except for the line, then I got surprised since I felt like they turned to stones in an instant.
As you can see, they pretty much all shared the same conclusion and the difference was noticed when my abs were contracted. Let’s break down both the situations:
When Abs Aren’t Under Tension
When abs aren’t under tension or simply “relaxed”, they become soft. Just like trained biceps or triceps, they appear big when they’re relaxed, yes, but the muscle won’t fully show unless you flex it and that’s the same for abs.
That’s how the midsection of most people looks when they’re in “rest” or digest” mode. The stomach tends to stick a little bit a feel softer than usual. Even if you have the biggest abs and the lowest amount of body fat (unless it’s lower than 5% which is not healthy at all) you’ll still have a slight belly when you’re relaxed.
When Abs Are Under Tension
When abs are under tension or they’re contracted (when you flex them or use your core), they instantly become hard. Just like when guys flex their biceps so that the “big round ball” appears, or when they straighten their arms to show their triceps.
All the pictures that you see on the internet or in magazines of men flexing their abs, they don’t look like that the entire day, they just flex during their entire photoshoot (which hurts if it’s longer than 10 minutes).
Another factor to keep in mind is that not all flexed abs are hard. There are some people that naturally have abs without any kind of work so they’re a lot weaker and softer even though they’re visible.
How Does Touching Abs Feel Like?
The same principle that I mentioned before will be applied here as well. Just like all other muscles, when abs are relaxed, they’ll be soft to the touch, when they’re contracted, they’ll feel firm and hard.
But if you really want to know the feeling of touching abs to the last detail, I’ll try to break it down for you.
In order to do so, you need to know the main “visible” components of abs. First of all, we have the 6 ab bumps (or 8 if it’s an eight pack) and the 3 to 4 bumps of the obliques (which are the abs on the side). Then we have the lines that are separating them, as well as the big line in the middle. Here is an illustration if you’re more of a visual learner:
Let’s take the example of a flexed hard six-pack. If you were to touch them using your hands, starting from the top all the way to the bottom, you’ll first feel the 2 bumps in the top, followed by the line that separates them, you’ll then feel the next two bumps and their corresponding lines until you hit the last two ab bumps. At the same time, you’ll constantly feel that big line in the middle. If you bring your hands to the side, you’ll also feel the obliques and their separating lines.
The bumps will feel like hard rocks with a slight layer of fat (depends on the body fat percentage, the less it is, the harder they’ll feel), and the lines will feel like an empty space in between. As funny as it may sound, abs feel a lot like touching a softer washboard which is where the term “washboard abs” came from.
Conclusion:
I tried to describe abs as best as I could but nothing will come close to feeling them yourself. If you’ve never had the chance to do so, don’t worry, you’ll eventually do so since abs are becoming pretty common nowadays. However, always keep in mind that they’re not a necessity and shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for you when trying to find a partner. In addition to that, most pictures that you see of guys with shredded abs are just a temporary state of how they actually look since abs look flat most of the time.