What Are The Best Exercises For My Abs?

It seems like everyone now wants great looking abs. That eternal quest for a fabulous “six pack” seems to be affecting both men and women, and people of all ages. The fitness industry knows this, and is quick to cash in with all sorts of new ab training contraptions, books, DVDs showing new techniques, and even pills to help you lose weight and sculpt your stomach, it seems like there are new offers out every week. So the question is, what is the best way to tone up your abs? The truth is, plain old exercise yields the best results; and some of the most effective ab exercises can be done right in the comfort of your own home, without the need to purchase expensive products or gym memberships.

I think most people will have heard of doing an ab “crunch”. While it seems like a really simple exercise, then in fact it does a great job of working your ab muscles. If you want to get even better and faster results though, you can modify it in a number of ways. For example, you can get an exercise ball and do your crunches on top of that, then your ab muscles are contracted for the entire time so you get a much more intense workout. You can then try a variation on that where you move to the right and the left as you do the crunch on the exercise ball, that will target your obliques which are at the side of your abs, helping to tighten and tone the stomach area.

You can get even more benefits out of the simple crunch, by adding a medicine ball (a small weighted ball) to them. By holding the medicine ball in front of you as you do a normal crunch then your abs have to do more work, you can also add in right or left twist to that too. Or you could get that extra edge by doing your crunches while on an incline bench. So you lie down with your head much lower than your feet and then have to struggle against gravity as you do your crunch. This forces your muscles to stay tight throughout the workout like with the exercise ball, to help give you exceptional results.

When starting any type of workout for your abs, it is always important to start off slowly, work at your fitness level, and gradually build upon your progress. One of the best ways to start is with the basic crunch, do 15 reps of that, 3 or 4 times a week. After a few weeks of those then you can get an exercise ball to make it tougher, but lower your reps down to about twelve. Once you are comfortable at this level, you can then introduce the medicine ball and start to work your obliques, strive to complete no more than ten reps per side. Save the incline bench for the end when you have already strengthened your abs a lot. Most importantly, take your time when you are working your abs, and remember that you will not get results overnight.

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