BUILD YOUR CORE COMPETENCY

Fitness influencer ULISSES JR’s abs aren’t just eye candy. They’ve kept him injury-free, even at age 48

When he reflects on the early years of his career, Ulisses Jr remembers the ‘crazy stuff ’. Twentysomething years ago, he’d often train with bodybuilders who outweighed him by one or two stone, and they’d push him to lift heavy. So he’d squat more than 225kg and deadlift around 272kg.

At the age of 48, as he looks back on that rigorous fitness regimen, he can’t help marvelling that he has never suffered a serious injury. Most gym-goers who train that intensely endure some sort of mishap, right? Then again, the Instagram icon, who’s still more ripped than any action figure available at Argos, has an explanation. ‘I’ve done a lot of stuff that could have messed up my shoulders, my back,’ he says.

‘But I really firmly believe because

I was always training my core, it really helped with stabilising a lot of the other muscles and giving me that foundation where I could push the envelope a little bit.’

Ulisses Jr pushed that envelope far, too, going from a self-described ‘skinny kid’ in high school to a bodybuilding veteran with one of the internet’s most iconic physiques. Now based in London, he has a combined 11.7 million followers across Instagram and TikTok and a thriving online-training business.

As his still-chiselled 10-pack attests, Ulisses Jr has always been maniacally devoted to his core training. It’s a habit he built in his twenties, when he started waking up every single day to a series of body-weight exercises (classic sit-ups and planks, bicycle crunches and reverse crunches). He’d aim to complete 100 of each before he’d eaten his first meal. (He believes training on an empty stomach helped him ‘feel’ his rectus abdominis, the muscle most responsible for visible abs, working.) He’d often train his abs again later that day, after he’d pushed weight with the bodybuilders, this time using weights to work through more targeted movements.

Ulisses Jr has relaxed this schedule these days, he admits, but he still doesn’t miss a morning session. He does the same movements he did in his youth, but sets of 25 reps instead of 100. He won’t ditch the morning routine, either, seeing as it’s created a rock-solid core that’s never failed him. ‘It’s really saved me a lot,’ he says. ‘It’s helped my training. I can do a lot of heavy movements without actually feeling anything. I have no back pain. I have nothing.’

This, of course, is the magic of serious ab training. Study after study has shown that training your abs can enhance your other gym exercises, that it can alleviate lower-back pain, and that it can even make you a better athlete. Strong core muscles help your body transfer force from your legs through to your upper body, and they lend your spine the critical stability needed to showcase raw strength and power in everything from overhead presses and biceps curls to moving a piano.

Oh, and they can keep you looking and feeling like a total badass into your late forties. They’ve done that for Ulisses Jr, after all. ‘When I was 20, 25, I was shredded,’ he says. Today,

‘I’m not as shredded. But I think for a 48-year-old guy, I look pretty decent.’