If you’ve been wondering what are the best abdominal exercises, read this article. It’s one personal trainer’s perspective to help you find the best exercises for your body.

Since I am a personal trainer, I am often asked… What is the Best Abdominal Exercise?

And my answer is often it depends. It depends on the goal. Now, I know most people want to know what is the best abdominal exercise to get rid of fat on their stomach, but unfortunately ab exercises by themselves do very little to help you get rid of stomach fat.

This is known as the spot reduction myth. Because of the powerful marketing companies, consumers continually think that they can work a spot on their body as magically melt fat away from that spot, but that is not how the body works.

Abdominal Exercises are useful for supporting good posture, preventing lower back pain, and improving function and sports performance. Abdominal Exercises are not good for spot reduction of belly fat.

Okay, back to the best abdominal exercise…

There was a study done called finding the safest abdominal challenge measuring work to compression ratio. This study looked at 9 ab exercises and compared the muscle work in the abs to the pressure in the lower back during each exercise.

According to this study, the exercise that worked the abdominal muscles the hardest while putting the least pressure on the lower back was crunches with the feet on a bench or ball. When the feet are lifted it takes away some of the arch in the lower back and takes some pressure off the joints.

In addition, the exercise that worked the abdominal muscles the hardest also put the most pressure on the lower back and that exercise was double hanging leg raises.

To determine which exercise is the best you must take into consideration the fitness goal. For example if someone has a slightly achy lower back, crunches with the feet up may be the best abdominal exercise because it works the abs really hard but doesn’t put a ton of pressure on the lower back. However, if you are an athlete looking for serious core strength, double hanging leg raises might be the best abdominal exercise for you.

Nearly all exercises have a benefit, so the most important thing is to be active and exercise. The best exercise for you may be the one that you like the most because you can.

Directory of Abdominal Exercises Here is a directory with picture and instructions of almost 100 abdominal exercises.

By Charles Inniss Published: 7/17/2008

 Abdominal Equipment Tips For Usage However, before we begin our discussion, it is important to point out that even the best ab equipment will not help you to lose weight around your stomach.

Best Ab Exercises For Effectiveness | Best Ab Exercises What are the best ab exercises and more effective in your abdominal muscles? If you’re trying to get a great flat stomach and abdomen doing 100 crunches.

Best Ab Exercises to Make You Look Your Best. | Best Ab Exercises In trying to achieve firmer and stronger abdominal muscles, you must do the best since the exercises can be found in health and fitness articles.

To get those six pack ripped abs you need to do the right abdominal exercises the the most effective way. Read on to learn more.

Even though numerous individuals concentrate on abdominal exercise to flatten and strengthen their stomach, in quite a few instances they are training their stomach to stick out instead of appearing flat and solid. Numerous individuals observe some changes when they initially start to workout their abs, but little changes after a month or two.

The first error many individuals do when executing an abdominal exercise is not the particular exercises they perform, but how they do them. Numerous individuals merely go through the motions while performing sit-ups and other ab exercise, and step-up the number of repetitions over time and find little difference.

Training Your Abs

With the objective of getting your stomach to be really flat, it is essential you train your muscles to acquire this shape. To attain flat abs, you must tighten up your stomach muscles during your abdominal exercise. Prior to beginning this abdominal exercise, suck your stomach in as though you were trying to tuck in your shirt and tighten the muscles in your stomach. Persist in keeping your muscles tight all through your repetitions.

If you do this correctly, it is likely you will feel quite a bit more of a burn in your abs compared to if you were to do a similar workout routine in the absence of tightening your abs. By holding your muscles tight and pulled in while you execute an ab exercise, you exercise for them to remain in that state rather than being unshaped but strong.

While it appears as if you do plenty sit-ups and commit to good eating habits you should be deserving of flat well defined abs, however, this is not the case. Regrettably, the workout routine you apply to strengthen and shape your abs may not be intended to develop the six-pack abs you are searching for.

Unique Abdominal Exercises

You might not understand it, but your ab workout might simply work your upper abs, providing you a two-pack rather than the hoped for six. In order to acquire traffic-stopping abs, it will be necessary for you to do an assortment of abdominal exercise workouts that center on various abdominal muscle groups.

There are a variety of unique sit-ups you can employ to concentrate on various abdominal muscle groups, in addition to exercises that involve you to lift or swing your legs out. While sit-ups are the most widely applied abdominal exercise, abdominal workout programs that require your abs to tighten in order to keep you well-balanced will produce splendid end results because these workouts will work the smaller and difficult to tone muscles in your abdominal area.

These are exercises for overall toned abs. Nevertheless, no single abdominal exercise will develop perfect abs. A beneficial exercise for your abs had better expect you to do a assortment of unique ab workouts.

Even though everyone would like to have perfect abs, diet, genetics, and life can sometimes get in the way. However, any abdominal exercise you can fit into your schedule will help get your stomach muscles tightened and burn any extra fat you might have in this area, as well as keep the pounds off in the holiday seasons.

Listen to Korbin Newlyn as he shares his insights as an expert author and an avid writer in the field of fitness. If you would like to learn more go to Body Building Tips and at Workout Routine advice.

By Korbin Newlyn Published: 10/17/2007

Discovering the Correct Abdominal Exercise That Gives You Ripped Abs To get those six pack ripped abs you need to do right abdominal exercises the most effective way. Read on to learn more. Discovering Correct Abdominal Exercise That Gives You Ripped Abs.

Get Ripped Abs – By Jeff Bayer Which is a serious motivational killer. Rest assured, though, that if you can get your body fat levels low enough and perform correct, targeted exercises for this muscle group.

How To Get Ripped Abs Add in a good core exercise program such as Firm and Flatten Your Abs and you have the recipe for success. TV: Okay, here’s another burning question.

Want to tighten your stomach muscles? Try out an abdominal exercise that best suits your fitness level. This article gives a brief idea about abdominal exercises. Read on…

Any activity that enhances physical fitness and helps in toning your body is known as physical exercises. There are two types of physical exercises – aerobic and anaerobic. These exercises help to strengthen the muscles and maintain the overall fitness of the body. Abdominal exercises help to tone the stomach muscles.

A Few Abdominal Exercises

Abdominal exercises have three levels – beginners, intermediate and advance. The abdominal exercises would help to strengthen one’s lower, upper and oblique muscles. A person could choose the level that suits him best and work out the same twice or thrice a week to help strengthen and tone ones abdominal muscles. It is necessary to take small breaks between various abdominal exercises. You could increase the number of repeats for the chosen level of abdominal exercise by two and gradually raise the workout number to 20 repeats. One of the best ways to tone one’s abdominal muscles is to vary the exercises and workout routines. The abdominal exercises should be performed slowly to get best results. An abdominal exercise generally tones the muscles known as rectus abdominis.

• Abs Crucnch

Use the following steps to perform the abdominal crunch exercise. Lie on the ground with knees bent. Keep your feet flat on a leveled ground. Fold your hands under the head. Relax before you start the workout. Keep the neck straight and the chest up. Slowly tighten the abdominal muscles. Slowly crunch your body weight up and forward from the sternum. Raise it to the level of comfort. Now slowly lower the weight and stop just before the shoulders touch the floor. Repeat this exercise a couple of times in a week. Always remember to keep your lower back flat on the floor. Never raise it.

• Abs Reverse Crunch

Abs reversal crunch also helps in strengthening the muscles rectus abdominis. The following steps help in toning abdominal muscles. To perform reverse abs crunch lie on the floor with legs straight. Put your hands under your buttocks for support. Keep the lower back on the floor and tighten the abdominal muscles. Slowly raise your legs perpendicular to the ground. Remember not to lock the knees. The lower back should remain flat on the floor when this workout is performed. Gradually lower your legs and stop few inches above the floor. Repeat this exercise couple of times.

• Bicycle Crunch Exercise

Bicycle crunch is an abdominal exercise that is rated among the top ten exercises. Read these steps to perform this abdominal exercise.

Relax before you do this exercise. Lie flat on the floor keeping the lower back pressed against the ground.

Keep the hands folded under the head and breath easy. Raise your knees to 45-degree angle and move them in bicycle pedal motion. Slowly, touch your left elbow to the right knee and vice versa. Repeat this exercise around 5 times initially and later on increase the repeats.

Abdominal exercises help to flatten your stomach, and also tone and strengthen the abdominal muscles. The top ten abdominal workouts include captain’s chair, torso track, long arm crunch, reverse crunch, bicycle crunch, exercise ball crunch, full vertical crunch, ab rocker, plank on elbows and toes.

By Maya Pillai Published: 7/21/2008

Upper Abdominal Exercises : Upper Abdominal Exercises: Kneeling Ab When using weights for kneeling ab crunches make sure to use a padded surface for the knees. Learn upper abdominal exercises such as kneeling ab crunches.

Stomach Exercise: Upper & Lower Abdominal Exercises : Exercise www.truthaboutsix6packabs.com Learn how to do abdominal exercises that work out the abdominal muscles, including how to do long arm crunches and much more for.

Abdominal Exercises – How to Strengthen Abdominal Muscles Fitness buffs engage in many different kinds of exercises for their abdominal muscles. There are sit-ups, weighted sit-ups, leg raises, plain crunches, crunches with legs bent, crunches.

 Exercising in proper postural alignment will increase your workout’s effectiveness and substantially decrease your likelihood of injury. Therefore, correct posture should be maintained at all times during your abdominal exercises. Having strong abdominal muscles is necessary for all-round body strength, as any lifting using either arms or legs, will make use of the abdominal muscles.

It’s important to remember for those that are aiming to have a well defined mid-section that two key areas will help with this. The first is your genetics – which you can’t change, basically if your parents have given you a fat gene, you’re got a harder but not impossible task ahead. The second rule to getting a six-pack, which is even more important than the exercise you do, is the food you eat – if your covering your hard work in the gym with your poor work in nutrition, then your never expose your abs.

With our sitting lifestyles today, it is no surprise that many of us have a fat in the abdominal area. Maybe you’re having a baby that will stretch your tummy out good! Possibly you’ve lost a lot of weight, but immovable belly fat just won’t go away. Don’t feel dejected, abdominal exercise will dissolve that fat away with just a half hour of effort on your part each day. You don’t need to have extra ordinary equipment in order to accomplished while listening to music or watching TV.

It’s half true that several people think that they can do abdominal exercise and tone their stomach. You can cut calories and also you can find yourself treading water. When performing an abdominal exercise, this means that you are toning up your muscles in your stomach and you can target the fat in that area to get free of it. To get into shape all you have to do is to diet along with the exercise in order to get in that area. However, if fat does come rotten, your stomach is going to look great if you keep up with the exercise.

Now days everyone is in to the fitness craze. And some of us may feel that were just not measuring up, especially, with the way people are prt rayed on TV. But don’t let any of that stop you, just be the best that you can be. And above all do what makes you happy and makes you feel better about yourself. Don’t let it be just a craze or only to look better. Let it be to build a better happier you. Remember how hard that we played as children and we were at it all day? Now as adults, we just have to give everything our best shot, just maybe at a lot slower pace. Nevertheless, it stills has its rewards. Exercise has been known to relieve tension and we all on given days have that. Take some time off too, just to relax. If you want to lose some extra pounds around your middle, you may want to do an abdominal exercise to get the look you want.

The next recommended abdominal exercise is some good old fashioned sit up. Doing sit-ups the old fashioned way provides the most strenuous workout. This involves folding your arms across your chest, bending your knees and pulling your body up until you are sitting up straight. They say full sit-ups beat more modern approaches, like "crunches" and sit-ups using exercise balls, when it comes to working muscles throughout the body.

And here’s how to start with sit ups. Traditionally, when you do a sit up you place your feet under something heavy like a table or a bench. You then place your hands behind your head and pull yourself up using your stomach until your elbows or your chin touch your knees. Return to the lying down position and repeat. When beginning your program, start with 25 sit-ups, increasing the number by 5 every other day. When you can do 50 easily, you’re ready for the harder style of sit-ups. You generally would do this at a pretty quick pace and it is common to race someone else to see who can do the most.

The harder type of sit-up goes like this: Lie down on the floor on your back, legs extended and heels touching the floor. Your arms should be extended behind you with the backs of your hands touching the floor. Placing your hands together, pull yourself up and extend your hands until they touch your toes. Yikes, that is hard! Persevere. Shoot for 25 of these sit-ups per session. Increase by 5 every other day, progressing to 50 as you get stronger. By this time, you’ll be seeing real results. The sit-up is the abdominal exercise without equal.

The sit up, on the other hand, is a bit wild and unruly. When you do a sit up you lift your lower back off of the ground and as such run the risk of back injury. You also are doing a full range of motion with the exercise and this lack of control brings other muscles into play.

In our own home we can find a lot of great abdominal exercise through online by surfing on the net. There are tons of exercises we can find it there to do, but be sure to do it properly in order to prevent injuries from your back. Although there are a lot of people do sit ups as their primary abdominal exercise, but still other does not want this because it puts too much stress on their back. You can find many other things to do aside from this and one of this they consider crunches to be much safer.

The crunch is the basis of almost all abs exercise motions. To do a crunch correctly you lay on the floor with your feet flat out the ground. Placing your hands on the side of your head or across your chest you tense your abs and slowly roll yourself up using only the muscles in your stomach. You crunch yourself up to a position where your abs is tight but your lower back hasn’t left the floor. Once you are at this upper position you lower yourself back down and begin the next rep before you are tempted to relax at the ground.

On the other hand, if you are pregnant make sure you take it easy with the abdominal exercise routine. Talk to your doctor about an all over exercise program that is good for you and to your baby. It is important to keep exercising when you are expecting, but you don’t want to harm the baby. Once the baby is born you can go back to the abdominal exercise to get back in shape. Enjoy the pregnancy and worry about your abs after you give birth. You’ll be a lot happier for it, and so will your baby.

Another good abdominal exercise is the toe-touch. This is another great exercise for your upper abs; however, you can easily make this exercise more challenging by lowering your legs with each repetition. This will recruit the use of your lower abs as well as your upper abs and will make for a more strenuous workout. Starting Position: Lie on an exercise matt flat on your back with your legs up in the air and your arms outstretched above your head. Exhale as your raise your arms up and reach your toes. Hold yourself in this contracted position for a moment, and then inhale as you slowly lower your arms back down until they almost touch the matt. Repeat your required repetitions before allowing your legs to touch back down on to the matt.

And here the best exercises to lose belly fat and trim your belly and waistline. Lose a couple of pounds and strengthen your core. You’ll feel so much healthier and livelier – it’s just a matter of sticking with the exercises until they feel more natural and comfortable. Once your stomached muscles get a bit stronger, it’ll become easier and easier to maintain a trimmer belly. The abdominal exercise to trim your belly fat is this: begin in a standing position with your arms at your sides and back straight. Raise your right arm over your head while sliding your left arm straight down your left leg. Reach with your right arm, extending your right hand over your head as though trying to touch your left shoulder. Use a bouncing motion, trying three times to touch your left shoulder, all the while keeping your back straight. Reverse arms and repeat. Begin with 15 repetitions and work up to 25.

If you do these abdominal exercises regularly, you’ll be looking good in a month’s time. Whatever your reasons for wanting to address your belly, the truth is if you want to see a reduction in belly fat, you are going to have to do a combination of aerobic activity and muscle-conditioning exercises and eat a sensible healthy diet. This does take patience and commitment, but the rewards could just be nice fitting pants before you know it, just in time for the holidays. I have a gut feeling you’re excited to start today! weight loss

By crizza reyes Published: 11/5/2007

Ab Exercises Abdominal Workout Routines | Turbulence Training Fat Loss Rest 30 seconds before repeating one more time. Advanced System #3. Do these exercises in circuit fashion with no rest between exercises.

3 Great Abdominal Exercises For Obese People Heavier people need to do special abdominal exercises for obese people to avoid injury Many of the popular exercises people do today are too much for someone.

Best Ab Exercises to Make You Look Your Best. | Best Ab Exercises These exercises are required to do for at least three to five sessions a week and with any choice of three types of abdominal exercises. By choosing the right exercise.

Study shows that the traditional crunch is not the best abdominal exercise. See what this study says are the best ab exercises.

The best ab exercises according to one study were those that showed greater effectiveness in the abdominal muscles. When doing abdominal exercises you can feel it in your muscles but to really give you a great ab workout, you want to use those abdominal exercises that are the most effective.

So what are the best ab exercises you ask? If you are thinking it is the traditional crunch you would be wrong. In a study conducted by the Biomechanics Lab in San Diego the traditional crunch came in at the bottom three. The study included thirteen common abdominal exercises including some using abdominal exercise equipment.

This study included 30 healthy men and women. They ranged from 20 years old to 45 years old and ranged from little or no activity to daily exercise routines. Each person was given a chance to practice the abdominal exercise before performing 10 to 12 repetitions. The study used an electromyography to measure the activity in the rectus abdominus and the oblique muscles.

Results of the Study

After gathering the data and analyzing it the study concluded that the best ab exercises were the bicycle crunch, the captain’s chair and the exercise ball crunch. These were the top overall abdominal exercises. These were also the top 3 for the best ab exercises and effectiveness in the rectus abdominus muscles.

The top 3 abdominal exercises for effectiveness in the oblique muscles were the captain’s chair coming in at number one, the bicycle crunch and the reverse crunch coming in at number three.

Following close behind for the rectus abdominus muscles were the vertical leg crunch and the torso track, taking spots 4 and 5 respectively. The fourth and fifth spot for most effective in the oblique muscles were the hover and vertical leg crunch.

Worst Ab Exercises Results

The bottom three abdominal exercises came in last for both the rectus abdominus muscles and the oblique muscles. These included the ab rocker coming in dead last, the exercise tubing pull at number 12 and the traditional crunch taking number eleven.

The results of the study showed that all 13 abdominal exercises were somewhat effective; some were just more effective than others. Whether you choose to do the best ab exercises or a variety of ab exercises, just make sure you do them correctly to get the most out of your workout.

How to do the Bicycle Crunch

1. Lie flat on your back and place your hands loosely behind your head.
2. Raise your left leg and bend your knee at a 45 degree angle.
3. Lift your other leg off the floor keeping your leg straight.
4. Lift your body up slightly touching your right elbow to your left knee.
5. In a bicycle motion with your legs, switch your left elbow to your right knee.
6. Repeat this motion for 10 to 12 repetitions.

How to do the Captain’s Chair

This abdominal exercise requires a "captain’s chair" which can be found at most gyms.

1. Firmly grip the handles with both hands and place your elbows flat against the padded arm rest.
2. Start with your legs dangling.
3. Slowly lift both knees towards your chest.
4. Slowly return both legs to the starting position.

For a slight variation to this exercise, when brining your knees up twist slightly at the trunk.

How to do the Exercise Ball Crunch

1. Sit on the exercise ball with your feet flat to the floor.
2. Let the ball roll back slightly and lie back until your thighs and torso are even with the floor.
3. Raise your torso to a 45 degree angle while pushing your naval towards your back contracting the muscles.
4. Repeat for 10 to 12 repetitions.

Here is even more information on abdominal exercises.

About Author
Julie is the author and creator of Exercise 4 Weight Loss where you can find lots of tips and information on exercise and weight loss.

By Julie Barros
Published: 8/18/2008

 Best Exercise to Lose Belly Fat Effective
Belly fat loss represents a first step towards a flat stomach; once you have reduced the fat deposits, you’ll have to focus more on the abdominal exercises in particular.

Best Ab Exercises For Effectiveness | Best Ab Exercises
Topping the list of the most effective in the rectus abdominus was the bicycle maneuver, captain’s chair from third is the exercise ball crunch. 

What is the Best Ab Workout for Belly Fat Loss?
Nutrition is the most important thing you can do in building your muscles. If you eat junk food, do not expect any workout routine to be effective.