ABSOLUTELY NOT

Something must be done about the shirt lifting scourge.

Right, so there I was, mid-workout, minding my own business, when one of my fellow gymmers wandered over, stood directly adjacent, and spent the next few minutes of his valuable time repeatedly lifting his shirt in front of the mirror, presumably to confirm that his abs hadn’t absconded during the fifteen reps since he last checked.

Please don't panic, they hadn’t. They were still in tact.

This individual then proceeded to contort his torso into evermore unnatural tableau to the point where I genuinely feared for his safety and the welfare of his back.

Now forgive me, but what is the point?

If your sole ambition in life is to cultivate abdominals so pronounced you could grate cheese with them, then you need to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror.

Actually, no. Terrible advice.

Just abide with a thought. Ask yourself - why you’re doing this, and what do you think it’s achieving?

Because repeatedly checking your abs — or any other body part — mid-set tells your fellow gym-goers two things about you.

One: you are vain.

Two: you are probably a bit simple.

It also demonstrates a fairly abhorrent misunderstanding of how the human body works.

Training increases blood flow not just to the muscle you’re working, but throughout your entire body. Any activity that gets your heart pumping will do this. So what exactly are you hoping to see? A sudden abdominal epiphany? A revelation ablaze in fresh vascularity that didn’t exist thirty seconds ago?

Are you seriously telling me that after having sex your first instinct is to leap out of bed, sprint to the mirror shouting to your beloved, ‘hang on a moment, just got to check my abs are still looking fly?’

No.

And if you do — then God absolve whoever you’re with.

Don’t get me wrong, we all enjoy the occasional ego boost. But the constant shirt-lifting, flexing, craning, tilting and grimacing suggests something closer to abstrain in some desperate attempt to extract validation from your own reflection. And it must stop. Especially if in doing so you are just getting in the way of those normal folk around you who coulnd't care less.

Maybe they are suffering from some mild but persistent psychological condition fearing that a vital body part may have wandered off without warning, requiring constant visual confirmation that it's still there. In fact, why they don't just go shirts off entirely so the gathered hoards can experience the full peacock display of pecs, arms and lats inflating like a pufferfish with a bicycle pump, I dont know.

It’s pointless. Dedicating an entire weekly session solely to crunches until your midriff is ablaze with the DOMS of a thousand reps too far doens't make you Eddie Hall. Visible abs do not equal a stronger core. A bit of chiselling on a torso with the depth of a cricket bat still leaves you with… a cricket bat.

Show me someone with an Eddie tree-trunk of a torso and I’ll be far more impressed. And that wasn’t built by chucking in a couple of side planks at the end of leg day.

In fact, it has been scientifically proven that the number of times a person lifts their shirt in a crowded gym environment to inspect their midsection is inversely proportional to their IQ.

Now, I’m aware that the derivation of the word 'gym' comes from the Acient Greek gymnós, meaning naked. But theese are the same soles who inisted on tying their scrotums up in little bows to avoid any unfortunate protuberances, and I have a feeling that if you wandered into your local Virgin Active like that, His Majesty’s Constabulary might want a quiet word.

So if you want to lift your shirt and flex — fine. Go ahead. Just understand that everyone else around you isn’t admiring your dedication, your discipline, or your definition.

They’re thinking exactly the same thing I am.

Stop checking your abs in the f**king mirror.

Rant over.