Chloe Ting’s 2-Week Abs Challenge: Does It Truly Work?

Chloe Ting’s ab routines on Youtube have become a global sensation, with over 200 million views on a single video. However, are they effective?

Photo by Bruce Mars on Unsplash.

I’m not a fan of fitness vlogs. They often promise fake guarantees and I never know if they are a reliable practice. However, when my sister told me about fitness vlogger Chloe Ting, I was intrigued. It was almost impossible to believe one video of hers had over 200 million views. That is a landmark that only music videos normally achieve on Youtube. So I decided to try out her routines myself. Since it was her most viewed video, I particularly committed to the 2-Week Abs Challenge she launched. The challenge definitely cost me a lot of work. I felt like I had legitimately worked out every time I did it. The challenge alone even made me sweat most of the time. However, I still needed to solve the golden question: can I get a six-pack from this two-week workout? Will it shape my body if I commit to it for only two weeks?

Chloe Ting’s format for the 2-week challenge is very organized. She compiled a bunch of 30-second exercises in a 10-minute routine. Every minute, the routine allows its practicers to rest for 10 seconds before going on with it. The 30-second exercises vary widely: they include bicycle crunches, plank jacks, heel taps, and the dreadful “hundreds” (inside reference). At the end of every workout, I definitely felt my abs burn throughout these past two weeks. And I get the reason why the video has over 200 million views now. If Ting’s audience checks the video daily for 14 days straight, it is logical that the video gets hundreds of thousands of views every day.

Since it was such a popular video, Chloe Ting’s 2-Week Abs Challenge was widely praised. Certified personal trainer Marissa Arnone, health writer Liam Curtis, and vlogger Taz Alam all considered Ting’s workout routine an adequate one. They praised the short time it took for the daily workout to be effective and its ability to keep its audience consistent. Alongside the three reviews, thousands of YouTubers have reviewed the workout routine positively, even if some reviewers stay hesitant at first. Furthermore, many people have expressed success from trying the 2-week challenge.

However, I am not a success story. Consider I am a 20-year-old mesomorph male. I am 5’11’’ and I weigh around 165 pounds. As I said, I tried the routine for 14 days. And my torso did feel more solid. However, it was not like I got a six-pack in two weeks. My abdomen toughened, but it still looked the same as it did two weeks prior. On the one hand, I understood it: getting abs in 2 weeks sounded too good to be true, right? However, on the other hand, I was still confused. An enormous amount of people had reported success on the internet with the same consistency as mine. I was frustrated. What could have gone wrong for me?

Well, one word summarizes what went wrong with me: nutrition. I left one part out of the three analyses over Chloe Ting’s challenge I quoted earlier. Without exception, they all emphasized that the 2-Week Abs Challenge is not the ultimate solution to getting a six-pack, but rather is a tool for people to get to that goal. The three analyses agree with the fact that nutrition is a determining factor towards getting a six-pack or hardening your abs. Even Chloe Ting explained that nutrition had a lot to do with the final results of the challenge. So, what was I eating during those two weeks?

I certainly did not watch my diet. I’m not one to eat meat every day, for once. I mostly drink water and coffee instead of soda. I eat fish and have scrambled eggs for breakfast constantly. And I don’t snack between meals much. The thing is I also consume a lot of processed foods and carbs. Bread, cereals, and whole milk are all included in my diet. I also included food with corn in my diet throughout those two weeks — mostly in tortillas that accompanied my meals. And finally, I occasionally had dessert with my family after some meals, such as ice-cream and chocolate cookies. These food elements were persistently present in my diet during the two weeks that I fulfilled Chloe Ting’s 2-Week Abs Challenge.

So, why was my daily diet not helpful for my six-pack abs goal? Because I included many foods and carbs in my diet that did not help to tighten my abdomen while I was doing the Chloe Ting routine. Fitness writer Elizabeth Quinn made an article with some tips to get six-pack abs. In her article, Quinn emphasized processed foods, carbs, and sugars were precisely the nourishment that affected the development of ab muscles. Furthermore, Quinn suggested fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and nuts as some examples of healthy foods. Moreover, the fitness writer advised for the prioritization of “healthy fats”, such as avocados and olive and fish oils.

Rachael Link also wrote an article, which title I loved. It read “Abs Are Made in the Kitchen”. The NYU graduate also recommended fruits and vegetables in the article to complement a diet that aims to develop six-pack abs. As well, Link highlighted the important inclusion of whole grains, high-protein meals, and healthy fats in a diet to develop abs. The issue was that I consumed many items that were rich in non-healthy fats, such as bread, corn, processed grains, and whole milk. A study published in the National Library of Medicine explained that whole grains (such as oatmeal and quinoa) helped to reduce body belly fat. In extreme contrast, refined grains increase body belly fat. Refined grains do not increase body weight drastically, though. Instead, their caloric intake is proportional to the increase of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and visceral adipose tissue indexes in our bodies, meaning they increase our waist circumference measures. Therefore, they make it less likely for ab muscles to show. Refined grains often include pasta, white rice, and flour-based pastries, such as brownies, muffins, cookies, and pizza. Since I included refined grains in my diet as I tried the 2-Week Abs Challenge, I was not holding a diet that helped my ab muscles to show. As Rachael Link wisely wrote, abs are truly made in the kitchen.

I also made another mistake during my two weeks of doing the challenge. Many of Chloe Ting’s 30-second exercises within the routine did make my ab muscles burn. I felt pain while doing some of them. So, as a coping mechanism, I rushed through some of the exercises. I made them quickly so I could feel the exercises fly by faster somehow. For example, if a crunches exercise hurt too much, I would do the crunches fast so my muscles did not hurt for much time. However, this is a terrible thing to do against getting six-pack abs. Certified fitness trainer Marissa Arnone briefly stated in a YouTube video that doing the exercises slowly is essential to get six-pack abs. Arnone explained that doing the exercises in the routine slowly engages the muscles into the workout and prevents the body from injuring during the workout. Chloe Ting herself confirmed this claim. Since I rushed the exercises in Ting’s routine, I didn’t engage my muscles hard enough into the workout and my abs didn’t burn enough to show the necessary results in a 2-week time.

However, there is documented evidence online that thousands of online users have engaged in the 2-Week Abs Challenge and have gotten positive results. I didn’t watch out for my nutrition and I didn’t engage fully in all of the exercises throughout the 14 days I tried the routine. Still, my experience was personal and it does not reflect the routine’s effectiveness as a whole. The objective conclusion is that nutrition and consistency are important factors to determine the challenge’s effectiveness in any type of body. Yet, Chloe Ting’s 2-Week Abs Challenge is a tool that has helped thousands of online users to improve their abdomen consistency throughout the world.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Chloe Ting’s free routines are an example of online-workout demand around the world. According to a Texas Medical Association research, going to a gym is one of the activities that pose the highest risk to contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As a result, a home workout is an activity that holds convenience until a COVID-19 vaccine is implemented. Chloe Ting’s challenge has benefited exponentially since the pandemic began. Her channel has gained 10 million subscribers since the lockdown began in mid-March. That’s right: 10 million. Furthermore, sales of fitness equipment rose 55% between January and March 2020 in the US, and fitness apps downloads are also reported to be on the rise. Though the University of Leeds professor James Stark predicts that gym businesses will gain strength once the pandemic ends, it seems that the workout-at-home genre will only become more popular until there is a vaccine against COVID-19.

To respond to the need for home workouts, Chloe Ting has designed many fitness routines for people to access freely. I tried her most popular one: the 2-Week Abs Challenge, which promises to get its users abs in 2 weeks and has gotten over 200 million views in less than a year. It is a great tool to get abs and to strengthen the torso muscles. However, nutrition and engagement to the fitness exercises within the routines are two essential factors for the challenge to give positive results to the body of anyone who commits to it. Chloe Ting’s 2-Week Abs Challenge is an innovative and accessible tool for anyone with a WiFi connection to exercise from any place without the need for quality fitness equipment. Furthermore, Chloe Ting’s routines satisfy the need to work out in a time where gyms pose a threat and the worldwide population is spending an increased amount of time indoors. As far as myself goes, I am willing to try the challenge again with the information I know now. But I know that Chloe Ting has caused a cultural impact that democratizes access to quality fitness training. So, if I have any piece of advice, I believe people should try it! It is an effective tool and it responds to fit body health standards in a gymless world.