Fast 6 Abs Blog

No amount of day dreaming will ever help you with your abs training goals, if you don’t know what kind of exercises will work which particular muscles of the abs. I cannot cover all the abs exercises in one post but maybe we can do it over several posts in the next few days.

To start with, the best exercises for abs to me will have to be crunches, reverse crunches, v-sits, leg raises, side bends and twists using a stick.

They are also easy to do and they can all give you better results if you do them using the ball, or an inclined bench, and this is true especially with the crunches.

Crunches on the ball stresses all your abs muscles but especially the upper abs. Crunches on the ball will exercise all your frontal areas including the deeper muscles. They can also affect your intercostals to an extent. Those are the muscles around the sides going up to your back and rib cage.

Reverse crunches train mainly the lower abs and so as leg raises. These are two of the best exercises for abs if done correctly. If you don’t do them right or tend to overextend your movements, then there is a chance the hip flexors and muscles of the hips will be worked, lessening the impact on the lower abs. Reverse crunches is not easy to do but if you master it, it will pay you dividends.

V-sits is best for all around complete abs workout. This is definitely one of the best exercises for abs and it is just a graceful and nice, natural movement to execute. Some people finds the v-sits difficult but that’s okay you don’t have to do 100 reps per set. If you can manage 20 or even 10 per set then that’s also okay. Keep at it and you will be hitting 30, 40 or more in no time.

The last 2 good exercises for abs I want to discuss is the twists and side bends. Side bends according to some people may tend to build too much of your intercostals hence making your waist wider but that’s probably a load of crap. Do more than a few hundreds per set to give your ab muscles a good workout.

There are other good abs exercises which I haven’t covered here so we’ll leave them for next time.

I often like asking people about the workouts they do and then sit there listening to them intently. 

In most conversations, the topic seems to evolve around naming the best abs exercise. When pressed further, people are not shy to tell us why in their opinion, a particular movement deserves the title of the best abs exercise. 

More likely they pick the exercise either because it either works for them or that it’s easy to do thousand of reps using it, or just that because it works the abs thoroughly according to scientific research. Those are all perfectly valid reasons.

Funnily enough the bulk of those who makes these remarks tend to be your average joes who works out a lot at the local gym and are not professionals. Only a few were actually qualified personal trainers or professional body builders.

Does that mean anything? Probably not. These guys also knows their stuff after all they live and breath iron week in week out. (I have made a point here to ask more professionals if I get a chance later).

So what is your best abs exercise and how do you choose an exercise to be the best exercise in your view?

For me, it’s very hard to go past the crunches as one of the best eventhough it only affects your upper and middle abs.  Most people like crunches because they are so natural to perform and they affect a lot more abdominal muscles than other exercises.  By varying the way you do them – twisting, ball, elevation or angle, you can get your abs exercised pretty thoroughly with crunches.

One of the best abs exercise that I cannot ignore will have to be the V-sit.  And yes my decision is not made because I can do them well.  It is more because, like the crunches, they affect most of your abs muscles and has been proven to stress the deeper muscles that are harder to reach.  It is a more complete exercise that the crunches.

Another one will have to be the reverse crunches because the way it stresses your lower abdominals.  It is not a complete exercise in my opinion but the way it affects your lower abs mainly gives it right to make the lineup.