Even if you can't see them, rest assured they're down there somewhere. And believe it or not, the abdominal muscles around your middle serve a more important function than making women chase you Benny Hill-style around the beach. Your abs help you stand up, sit down, turn around, play sport and lift things. They're such an important part of your core - the central muscles that power everything you do - that it makes perfect sense you should want to make them stronger. And, all right, show them off.

Your free Men's Fitness abs workout DVD is the first part of the plan - follow that and you'll be well on the way to a stronger, more toned and lady-friendly midsection. But we never do things by halves at MF, and these tips will help you get even more
out of your abs workouts.

1 Understand your abs
Before you head to the gym to hunt for your six-pack, it helps to know what you're actually looking for. We all have them, but some people's abdominal muscles are underdeveloped while others are hiding them under a layer of flab.

The abdominals sounds like a group of muscles, but in fact it's a single sheet that connects the top of your pelvic bone to the bottom of your ribcage. Hard connective tissue separates its eight 'segments', and on each side are your obliques, which support the abs. See the diagram over the page for more on what goes where.

2 Don't do sit-ups
The classic sit-up - jamming your feet under a bench and raising your chest to your knees - mainly works your hip flexor muscles, not your abs. Instead, the crunch, in which you roll your shoulders off the floor by contracting your abs, is much more effective at targeting your six-pack.

However, cranking out hundreds of crunches is still not the best way to build your abs. Like any exercise, the best way to increase muscle size and strength is by increasing the resistance rather than increasing the number of reps you do. Try holding a weight plate or medicine ball across your chest as you do crunches, and keep the rep range between eight and 25.

3 Work the whole body to build abs
It's not just crunches that shouldn't be overdone - it's a bad idea to stick rigidly to any one abs exercise. You need to work the whole body, because this can raise your metabolism for hours after you finish exercising, which means you burn even more calories - even when you're asleep. There are scientific names involving fancy acronyms for this effect, but we like the simple term 'afterburn'.

To do it, you need to introduce big compound moves into your workout regime. Exercises such as the barbell squat, deadlift and bench press involve large muscle groups elsewhere in the body, but they also engage the core muscles in your midsection that give you a six-pack.

4 Save your abs till last
Do abdominal exercises at the end of an all-body workout. That way the abs won't be tired early on when you need a strong core for those compound moves. Cunning, no?

5 Don't rely on the machines
Where possible, use free weights and train standing up, rather than sitting in a machine. This will require your core muscles to work harder during an exercise because you're being forced to stabilise yourself. It basically makes exercise more difficult, but the extra effort required will improve your results.

6 Use your full range of motion
Doing crunches on a Swiss ball, for example, allows you to work the abs through a greater range than doing crunches on the floor, where your head tends to make contact with a solid surface if you attempt to extend the move beyondits logical conclusion.

Swiss balls are also great because they're wobbly. This forces your muscles, including your abs, to work harder to stabilise your body during any exercise than if you were on a solid surface such as a bench.

7 Watch your form
Nearly all abs exercises require you to draw your chest towards your hips by contracting your abs. This is often only a small movement, but you need to concentrate on doing it properly.

Focus on maintaining the tension in your abs during exercises, rather than simply cranking out the numbers. Keep each movement slow and deliberate, otherwise momentum will take over and you won't be getting the full benefit. So rather than crunching you'll be rocking, for example. Lots of people do this simply so they can say they've done 100 crunches. They are, by and large, idiots.

8 Hit your abs from all angles
Your old friend the crunch hits your abdominals from above, but you also want to hit them from below and from the sides if you want to see the best results.

To target the lower part of your abs, do moves that draw your hips towards your chest, such as reverse crunches or hanging knee raises. Side crunches will hit your obliques and Russian twists will work those deep core muscles that help your bodyto rotate from side to side.

9 Don't neglect your back
It might not sound very glamorous, but you need to do back exercises to even out your training programme and avoid any muscle imbalances. If you've built up your abs yet neglected your back you will be more prone to injury, and there is nothing more frustrating than being forced to lay off exercise because you can't stand up properly. Pull-ups, pull-downs, bent-over rows and deadlifts are all ideal back exercises that you can work into your weekly routine.

10 Challenge your muscles
It's common yet intensely frustrating to find that just as you're on the verge of revealing that six-pack, you hit a plateau and stop progressing. Chances are your abs have stopped responding to the same old exercises because, in simple terms, they've become bored of doing the same thing week in, week out.

Muscles need to be challenged constantly to keep them growing, so you should overhaul your routine every four to six weeks to keep bombarding them with new stimuli. Equally there is no reason to repeat the same workout three times a week, so try different things on different days. You may be getting the hint by now - variety is good. So long as it doesn't involve Bruce Forsyth or the London Palladium.

11 Be progressive
We don't mean you have to pick up a guitar and strum along to Dark Side Of The Moon - we're talking workouts here, remember? What we mean is that you have to keep increasing the resistance you use by around five per cent every couple of weeks so that your muscles continue to get stronger. Beware of overtraining, however. Don't rush to lift heavy weights before you're ready, and always leave at least a day between workouts to let your body recuperate.

12 Keep cardio sessions short
Short and, crucially, intense. Cardio training is important because it helps to strip away fat, but don't plod along the streets in the misguided belief that a two-hour run is going to make your abs pop out. In fact, after you run for 45-60 minutes your body starts burning muscle, rather than fat, for fuel. This is far from ideal if you want a muscular midsection, so instead do short, hard sessions - either sprints or intervals, where you mix short bursts of maximum effort with recovery jogs. Try repeating a cycle of one-minute flat-out bursts followed by one-minute rests. This burns more calories and leaves your muscles where they are.

13 Keep your back straight
Once you've finished your workout, don't forget to maintain good posture for the rest of the day. Something as simple as sitting up straight at the office or on the train will keep your abs activated.

14 Strike the right balance
The correct nutrition is vital. Even if you build and tone your abs no-one will see them if they're stuck under a layer of fat. Many people have to shift a fair amount of body fat before that six-pack emerges, and if you're one of them make sure you consume fewer calories than you burn off. You should also make sure you eat 1.5-2g of lean protein per kilogram of your bodyweight every day to help muscle repair itself and grow. Eat straight after a workout to refuel properly - a 2:1 mix of fast-acting carbs and protein will top up energy levels and provide your muscles with the building blocks they need to get stronger.

15 Eat the right foods
You can probably guess the types of food you should and should not be eating, but we're going to spell it out for you anyway. Get plenty of fruit and veg, and eat regular small meals throughout the day to keep your energy levels high and your metabolism firing on all cylinders. Avoid junk food - you heard us - and bin high-calorie processed snacks such as crisps, cakes and chocolate.

16 Drink plenty of water
Often when you feel hungry your body is actually dehydrated, and that's what sends you to the biscuit tin. What you really need to do is stay hydrated, which has the added bonus of helping your body burn fat more efficiently.

Unfortunately, even though it's wet and comes in a glass, booze doesn't count. Either cut it out altogether or limit yourself to the occasional treat. It's not called a beer belly for nothing, and until women come fitted with X-ray eyes your good lady is not going to see through it to appreciate that six-pack you've just crafted. Cheers.