Here you will discover some of the best abdominal workouts, as proved by genuine, scientific research, not just handed down from generation to generation by the guys in your local gym. Having the coveted "6-pack" abs is one of the most sought after marks of a great body. People work for years to develop those great abs, and then they love to show them off as they strut down the beach. The old standby exercises for developing washboard abs are the crunch and the sit up, but are they the best? After all developing your abdominal muscles is difficult enough, without wasting time on exercises that just don't do the trick. You want to get the maximum results for the effort you put into your ab program, don't you?
Thankfully there have been numerous scientific studies done on exercise and physiology of the abdominal region. One in particular stands out, as the definitive guide to what works and what doesn't with respect to ab workouts. It was done by Dr. Peter Francis of San Diego State University in California for the non-profit group American Council on Exercise (ACE). The University employed their bio-mechanics lab to settle once and for all what you should be doing when you want to get those rock hard abs and that super strong core.
So, what works for your abs? Well first of all, a look at how the university tested, and what makes the results of this study so powerful. Unlike many other investigations, this one actually used special instrumentation to examine how much activity was involved by each of the abdominal muscle groups. The main muscles of the abdominal region are the obliques and the rectus abdominus. The obliques run down each side of the belly, forming the outer border of the vaunted "six-pack". The rectus abdominus form the actual six or eight pack, whichever you've been blessed with.
The instrumentation used for the test is called the electromyography, machine, but is abbreviated EMG machine for obvious reasons. This nifty little device actually measures the electrical currents created by the muscles when they are active. The greater the the current created by a tested muscle group, the more fibers are involved and the stronger they're contracting. That makes it relatively to measure with a great degree of certainty what exercise are effective and what are not. They examined both the abs and the obliques and assigned separate effectiveness scores for how each of the exercises affected each muscle group.
The research group examined 13 different abdominal exercises. How good is the crunch? They assigned it's activity as 100, and used it a the reference for the other exercises. To put it bluntly, the crunch isn't very good. Sure, crunches will build a stunning set of abs, but why use them when almost every other exercise tested gives a better abdominal workout? The group included one of those ab rocker machines too, to see just how good some of those late night infomercial machines work.
Lets get it out of the way right now. The ab rocker scored a measly 21 effectiveness for abs, compared to the crunch's 100. It brought up the rear for oblique activity too, but didn't trail by so far (that would have been tough), knocking down a 74. Why waste your money on this thing? Another machine, the Ab Roller did marginally better than the crunch, netting a 101 score for obliques and a 105 for abs. Again, you may as well be doing crunches and saving the money for healthy food.
As noted, the crunch scored a 100 baseline for both abs and obliques. Nothing finished below the crunch except for the previously noted Ab Rocker and the Tubing pull, basically an inverted crunch using tubing for resistance instead of your body weight. It stands to reason this exercise would be less effective than the crunch. That's because the amount of resistance is generally going to be lower using tubing as resistance for an inverted crunch, than is offered by your body weight when doing traditional crunches. The tubing pull scored a 77 for obliques and a 92 for abs.
What if you want to break the mold and do an exercise that is more effective for both abdominals and obliques than the crunch? You could try the long arm crunch. In this movement you straighten your arms so they extend past your head and stay parallel to the floor, rather than clasping your hands behind your head as with the traditional crunch. The added resistance provided by your arms stretching above your head enables the long arm crunch to score a 119, and 118 for abs and obliques, respectively. That's a healthy 20% improvement over the traditional crunch, but don't you deserve more?
If you feel you do then you should look at the vertical leg crunch. As its name suggests, you begin the crunch movement with your legs extended vertically into the air, rather than up on a bench or bent, as in a traditional crunch. Oh Boy! does that increase the intensity of your exercise! It really feels like it works better, and that's backed up by the EMS machine's measurements. The vertical leg crunch ups the intensity even more, scoring a 127 for abs, but a whopping 216 for obliques! Now we're talkin'!
This should be enough to convince you to confine the lowly crunch to the dustbin of workout history, and step up to a new, and more effective ab workout using long arm and vertical leg crunches. They are much more effective, and you'll get more done in less time.
These ab exercise are much better than the traditional crunch, but did you know there are some powerful ab exercises that finished even better in the study? It's true, and they'll blast you abs to new heights in less time than ever before. Couple those top performing ab exercise with a whole, new element in abdominal training to get the kind of sculpted abs that you've only seen in magazines. Check out Belly Fat Loser's Absolute Best Ab Workout right now!
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