The Best Abdominal Exercises?

by Bryan P Halter on September 7th, 2010

Hi there. I hope you are having a great week and hitting your workouts hard. I just got back from Boston after celebrating with my brother for his bachelor party. Needless to say I am ready to get back into my diet program and workout routine. Although it was awesome getting to eat at Moe’s. Sometimes nothing beats a burrito. I did unfortunately know how many calories were in my burrito though and still had to get it. If you have never had Moe’s, just to give you an idea, the Homewrecker Burrito is over 900 calories not including the chips and salsa.

Anyway, it is time to get back to the program. When you eat a lot of burritos you tend to start to get a little (or big) bulge in the midsection. Now while doing all the ab exercises in the world doesn’t mean it will get rid of the fat over your stomach, a core program is essential to any type of exercise program.

So what is the best type of abdominal exercise? Well, really I personally think you need a variety of exercises to properly train all of the functions of the core and abdominal muscles. There are certain exercises though that may be better than others.

There was recently a study in the Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy that compared two types of abdominal exercises. In this study they wanted to compare traditional floor exercises, such as crunches and sit ups, versus stability ball exercises, like roll outs and knee tucks. Subjects were hooked up to electromyographic machines to record muscle activation for each exercise. Researchers found that the stability ball exercises, specifically the Roll Out and Pike, where the most effective for activating the upper and lower rectus abdominis, internal and external obliques, and the latissimus dorsi. They did so without putting the lower back at risk.

One thing to be careful of, however, is that these are fairly advance exercises. Make sure you master basic core exercises before attempting stability ball exercises. If you would like an abdominal challenge, you can look at this weeks Free Featured Workout The Stability Ball Ab Challenge. This workout contains some of my favorite stability ball exercises including the roll out and pike that were used in this study. Click here to view this workout. Remember you must sign up for a free account to see this workout.