I would like some abs page 2

[PeaceCorpsCaveMan]

No.. I like the idea of planks but my arms give up way before I even start to feel my abs..

Are you sure you're doing planks correctly? You should be on you elbows, no your hands like a push up.

[Scott F]

ab muscles respond like other muscles. If you want bigger abs you have to stress them the same way you do your pecs. That can mean using progressive weighted incline setups or weighted cable crunches. And you may have to accept that you might not have the genes that allow for much bulking up. Ab Workout To Increase Ab Size | Muscle & Strength

[IcarianVX]

When I wasn't eating enough and I was 130 lbs at 6'1" I could hardly see my abs..

You have to build them to see them. Yes, you need very low bodyfat levels, but you need the muscles too. It's the same thing with chest, arms, legs, etc. If you don't have anything to show, then nothing shows.

[jfreaksho]

Aren't you 14 or 15 years old? You might just have to keep lifting for another couple of years, unfortunately. Everyone hits different growth spurts at different times. An acquaintance in high school was always a tall skinny guy. He spent the summer before senior year working on a farm, and came back to school with an additional 30 pounds or so, and visible muscle where there wasn't any. I think he would have been 17 or so at the time. My brother-in-law gained 30 pounds of muscle the summer after he graduated from high school, because he was no longer starving himself for wrestling.

Keep lifting, keep eating, and your body will catch up at some point. You will have a huge jump in a matter of months where you just pack on 10-15kg when your body is ready for it. Your abs will probably start showing at that point. Without some kind of crazy hormone therapy, I don't think there is any way to accelerate it. It'll be like magic when it happens, I promise. You're doing all the right things, and it will pay off.

[Misabi]

Are you sure you're doing planks correctly? You should be on you elbows, no your hands like a push up.

I think you can do them either way. But if you do them on your elbows, then you're obviously taking your arms out of the equation, so you fail when your abs fail rather than your arms.

As PrimalRob said, these are all good:

dragon flags
L-sits
hanging leg raises
bear crawls
reverse crunches
medicine ball slams
shoveglove/sledgehammer swings

Add in the following and you're gold

mountain climbers
hanging knee raises (if you can't manage hanging leg raises)
front levers (if hanging leg raises are easy)
windshield wipers

(this doesn't mean that you need to get obsessive and build a workout containing all of the above though, just mix it up to hit your core from all sorts of angles and keep them guessing )

You should also check out http://www.youtube.com/user/TheF0rtress, He's around your age and does all bodyweight exercises.
He does have a few videos that are about his religious beliefs/philosophy, but don't let those put you off if you're not into that.

He's got a lot of really good video tutorials showing different bodywieight exercises and progressions to get there.

[ms sage]

As a personal trainer I hear this all the time. First it is true abs are made in the kitchen. You need low body fat to see them. But maybe more importantly, genetics has a lot to do with the 6 pack effect. Many folks just are never going to see a 6 pack no matter how low the body fat goes. The striation is just not there for some of us. Yet another thing to blame on mom and dad.

[yodiewan]

Good advice in this thread. I wanted to share my experience. I was pretty thin growing up (5'11" ~145lbs). After I'd been weight training for a year or two, I added about 10 lbs, but I still didn't really have amazing abs. This weight gain didn't require a ton of additional eating; it was mostly just a function of increased training I guess.

Then I made a concerted effort to gain 10 more pounds. This required eating well beyond appetite for many months. I got bigger all over and at first my abs didn't really look a ton better. Over the next several months I slowly recomped (less fat, more muscle, but same weight). After that, I finally had what I considered respectable abs.

So in my case, abs were made in the kitchen. I had to put it lots of work to eat MORE.

Also, I do no direct ab work. I do weighted chinups, squats, deadlift, overhead press, and a few accessory lifts.

[heatherdarbs]

I would still do them. During the exercise, I can't feel much going on in my core, but my midsection is pretty fit for only doing planks. It also gets your tooshy and arms (as you know). I never would have thought planks a few times a week would give me visible obliques, but they're there.

[PrimalHunter]

When I was 5'10" and a skinny 130# at 6.7% bf, I didn't have abs. But I remember seeing some muscular guy in Men's Fitness who had 8% bf and a six-pack, despite having love handles. So I think the importance of building muscle to get a six-pack is underrated.

[EyeOfRound]

I haven't specifically worked on my abs for a while - I've just been doing Crossfit for 1.5 years now - but when I did, I credit weighted crunches on a decline bench with 90% of my ab development. I started with a 10-lbs plate and worked up to 25.