BODY WATCH : Ab-session : For Many Guys, Nothing Says They’re Lean, Mean Fitness Machines More Than a Washboard Stomach

Stretched out on the floor at a Studio City gym, Wil Bowers, 35, is reluctant to take a break from his abdominal exercises.

Only when he’s assured that the interruption will be brief does he stop crunching and start chatting about why he does this. Flat abs, he explains, “give me confidence. And that’s important for an actor.”

Like Bowers, Albert Schoenfield of Los Osos is justifiably proud of his silhouette, maintained by swimming 72 laps a day. But the 80-year-old turns just a little snooty when he’s reminded that not everyone his age is so svelte.

“It disgusts me to see these guys with beer bellies,” Schoenfield says. “If a man bulges over his belt, it tells you something. He has no control over himself. I’ll never be that way.”

Schoenfield would fit in perfectly at my next family reunion.

At the last gathering, my 79-year-old dad pointed out that he might have less hair, but that his stomach--had we all noticed?--is still pretty flat for a fellow his age. And my son, 17 and MTV-addicted, regularly crunches to the videos, already aghast at the prospect of gaining a gut.

Sure, women fret about their tummies, too--especially after childbirth, when the abs can resemble unkneaded dough. But men seem to downright angst at their abs.

“Of any body part for a man, the area that says, ‘I’m mean, I’m lean, I’m in shape,’ is the abdominal area,” says Tony Little, who as pitchman for the Ab Isolator device sold via infomercials has more than a casual interest in midriffs.

Of course, anyone who’s been out and about lately has noticed that many guys seem to be stuck in that under-construction phase or more charitably put: the great-abs- could-be-right- around-the-corner stage. Which explains why exercise experts continually hear the same pathetic plea: “Please, can you help me lose this gut?”

Exercise physiologist Richard Cotton is reassuring without glossing over some ugly truths.

“Abdominal fat is the last holdout for most men,” says Cotton, of the American Council on Exercise, a San Diego-based nonprofit organization that certifies exercise instructors. The middle’s also the first place guys are likely to gain, especially with age.

And, while washboard stomachs are stereotypically linked with fitness, it’s not always the case. “A man could be very lean, have a fairly athletic body fat percent and still have a little bit of abdominal fat,” Cotton says.

On the other hand, a guy with great abs who neglects cardiovascular exercise could be very unfit and have lousy-looking, plaque-clogged blood vessels.

Guys with guts tend to think abdominal exercise is the one and only answer, but Cotton tells them to forget about spot-reducing. It’s a myth.

“You can’t exercise an area and burn the fat there [more than other areas],” he says. “You can tone the muscles under the fat with abdominal work.”

But ab exercises are just one part of the strategy. And talking about ab work first can be putting the cart before the horse, says Scott King, head trainer at Metabolic Project, a West Los Angeles training facility.

“Get body fat down to a level that’s going to reveal the muscularity underneath,” he tells clients. Next, develop the ab muscle group--made up of the rectus abdominis, internal and external obliques, and transverse abdominis.

Pasadena personal trainers Richard and Cathy Cota advise clients to adopt a three-pronged program. Get regular aerobic exercise to strengthen the cardiovascular system and help burn body fat, including the belly fat associated with heart-disease risk. Do resistance exercises, including ab work, to build overall lean muscle tissue and thus boost fat burning. Improve the diet, being careful not to overlook alcohol intake. (They don’t call them beer bellies for nothing.)

Exactly which ab exercises are best is a matter of debate among fitness experts. But the goal’s the same: to strengthen the abdominal muscle group.

Full sit-ups, the old standby, have been largely replaced by crunches, a more controlled movement with less risk of injuring the back. With a crunch, the spine is rounded just enough to activate the muscles of the stomach and waist area. By doing variations on the crunch movement, such as twisting, you can target all the abs.

But King thinks simple crunches aren’t enough. “Without any resistance, over time, crunches lose effectiveness.” So he relies on weight machines, increasing the load over time, to help with ab work. To tone the obliques, for instance, he sits on an angled bench and twists to the side. Then he adds weight by pulling down on an overhead cable attached to a weight stack.

Keeping abs toned takes only five to 10 minutes a day, experts say, provided you follow through on the rest of the program.

“The abdominals are a responsive muscle group,” Richard Cota promises. More so, he says, than the chest or arms. “A man will see results more quickly on the abdominals than a woman will on the hips or thighs,” he says.

And of course, strengthening the abdominals isn’t just vanity-driven. Strong abs can improve posture and are vital for a healthy back. In fact, Scott Braun, 38, of Marina del Rey began doing ab exercises a few years ago to alleviate lower back pain. “My back got much better,” he says, “and my body started changing within a few weeks. My stomach is flatter.”

Still, not everyone ends up with awesome abs. So some seek out plastic surgeons such as Dr. Brian Novack of Beverly Hills, who specializes in a procedure he calls liposculpture. It’s an improvement, he says, on traditional liposuction because it uses ultrasound to break down the fat. “It’s extracted in smaller segments than [via] traditional liposuction,” so there’s less bleeding and bruising.

Yet even liposculpture has its limits. “If someone is 30% body fat, he is not going to have a washboard stomach after liposuction,” Novack says. Nor is everyone a candidate for the procedure, which can cost $5,000 and require three or four days of recovery. “Liposuction doesn’t work for dense fat,” Novack says, so he turns down about 10% of men who seek his help.

What then? For solace, men could turn to Los Angeles psychologist Herb Goldberg, author of “The Hazards of Being Male” (Nash Publications, 1976), who says he pays little or no attention to his own abs and has some reassuring words for men whose stomachs show signs of neglect.

Having a little bit of a gut could be a sign of emotional health, Goldberg says. “It indicates an ability to let go.”

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Abs of Desire

Tony Little, a self-proclaimed abs expert and the Infomercial King of the Ab Isolator, recently voted 22 celebs to his best abs list. Here are the 10 men (in alphabetical order) who made the cut:

* Kevin Bacon

* Tom Cruise

* Hugh Grant

* Val Kilmer

* Chris O’Donnell

* Brad Pitt

* Gary Sinise

* Wesley Snipes

* Sylvester Stallone

* Denzel Washington