Yea, mine don't show. I'm trying to get to where I can see them, but my abs and buttocks still have a bit of sway. I suspect at least half of the body fat I have left is there. I added (roughly) because bf% measurements are all different. Some measurements might still have me around 10%. I'm not that concerned. I'm still making progress as I adjust my diet. No, I'm not competing. I'm just a normal guy trying to see what I can accomplish. I've had a few people ask me "you're not going to get any smaller are you?" because I used to be around 20-25% bf, and I looked OK there. I look way better now, but I had a guy call me a neo-nazi the other day (I shave my head). /shrug So I guess now I look a lot harder and some perceive my resting expression as anger.
I think I'll fail to ever see my abs with my current path of burning fat while only gaining a little muscle. I'm going to have to bulk and cut back down again I think. My abs aren't that significant, so I'd have to be ridiculously low to see them atm.
Would you say you're an ectomorph body type? If not, what kind of core exercises do you do? As a classic endomorph I've never had a problem developing large muscles, but I've never in my life been lean. When I was semi athletic in high school I was still muscular-fat (probably 15-18% body fat).
Currently I'm probably high 20's body fat, but even with my sizable Buddha belly you can see my top two abs when I flex. Literally all I did for core workouts was 3 sets of planks and side planks for 1.5 mins, twice per week for the last 6-8 weeks. I'm working with a personal trainer now who has me doing a little more robust routine, but it's only once per week.
Anyway, the fact that I can already see (and feel) significant ab tone through the belly fat makes me pretty confident that when I do finally get down to 12ish% I'll have at least semi-showing abs without flexing.
Edit: I just remembered a story that may also help demonstrate what I'm saying above. During my 2nd basic training (I was already enlisted in the Army then got accepted into West Point), I injured my knee and had bursitis. Because I was a sarcastic cunt, I never let an opportunity to penetrate the machismo of the cadets-in-charge go to waste. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a pain in the ass to the leadership team, just a nice breath of levity for my younger peers. If it wasn't funny or the time timing was inappropriate, I kept my mouth shut like everybody else.
In any case, my behavior was most certainly breaking "military bearing," so I was given the opportunity to enjoy many,
manycorrective training sessions. Normally this would be push ups - lots and lots of push ups - but I was on crutches so the movement of choice was the flutter kick.
The reason I'm mentioning all this is because after 2-3 weeks of an average of a hundred flutter kicks per day, I had an epic V in my groin, despite the fact that I was 20ish% body fat. For whatever reason I get big fluffy muscles pretty quickly and easily.
