I have a hypothesis and am looking for someone to validate it for me.

Pavlov was a founder of classical conditioning.  His experiements showed that if you repeatedly rang a bell before presenting a dog with food, the dog would salivate.  Pretty soon you could stop presenting the dog with food, but the dog would still salivate at the sound of the bell.

Why can’t this work for abdominal muscles?  I’ll drink a margarita, then do crunches.  Margarita, crunches.  Margarita, crunches.  Pretty soon I can stop doing the crunches and my abdominal muscles will still respond after I do abs.

Anyone care to give it a shot?