Ab Exercises - These Are The Best Ones You Can Do
There are an almost unlimited number of ab exercises that you can perform. If you go into a typical commercial gym, you'll see people doing all kinds of different movements like crunches or situps in an attempt to tone their abdominal muscles. Plus there are all those abdominal machines. Which exercises are actually the best ones?
Before we try and run down some of the best movements to include in your ab exercise routine, one thing needs to be noted. Doing these exercises can build your abdominal muscles, but neither these nor any other stomach exercises can remove fat from any particular area of the body. So don't think you can do hundreds of reps of your favorite abdominal exercise in order to burn fat off your stomach. If you do enough reps, you will burn calories, which should help you lose fat (assuming you don't increase your calorie intake), but you cannot target a certain area for fat loss. The fat will come off where your body wants it to come off, just the way it went on. And there are easier ways to burn calories than doing hundred of ab exercises.
So let's get started with our list of great ab exercises. How did we come up with these rankings? Well, the American Council on Exercise did a study at San Diego State Universtity that ranked thirteen exercises using EMG equipment to detect muscle stimulation in the rectus abdominus (the six-pack area) and the oblique muscles (the sides of the waist where 'love handles' can develop).
The movement that ranked best as a six-pack ab exercise and came in second for the obliques was the bicycle. To do this one, lie on your back with your hands behind your head or neck. Raise your legs a couple of feet off the ground, and then bend one leg while raising the shoulders off the floor and touching the opposite elbow to the knee. Then lower that leg, bend the other, and touch the other elbow to that knee. Keep your lower back pressed into the floor at all times and concentrate on using your ab muscles to perform the movement. The exercise that was rated number one for the obliques and second for the six pack was the captain's chair. This requires an apparatus found at most commercial gyms. It has handles and a vertical pad, and is used to perform both this exercise and dips. To do the movement, press your back against the pad and use the abs to raise the legs while bending the knees. Lower back down slowly, and keep the back pressed into the pad throughout the exercise. Third for the rectus abdominus and sixth for the obliques was the exercise ball crunch. To do this one, lean back on the swiss ball with your lower/mid back area, placing your hands behind your head or crossing your arms across the chest. Curl your upper torso up while not allowing the ball to roll around on the floor, using only your abs to comlete the movement. Then lower back down. As you become more accomplished at the movement, you can increase the amount of stretch in the lowered position. Third for the obliques and seventh for the rectus abdominus was the reverse crunch. This is my personal favorite. It doesn't stress my neck and I get to lie on my back while exercising. What else could you ask for? :-) To do it, lie on the floor, placing hands flat near your butt or behind your head. Bend your knees to 90 degrees, and then curl your hips up, raising your knees towards the ceiling using only the contraction of your abs. There you have some of the best ab exercises you can do. Try a few and see how you like them. If you don't like any of them, you can search the web and find others, but it'll be worth your while to give these a fair trial, as they offer so much bang for your buck.
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