In our last article, we have seen the importance of a good lower ab workout, what benefit it has for your back and your health, and also how it can help you to get a flatter stomach. We also explained reverse crunches, the best lower ab workout for beginners. Abs machines can you help to exercise your lower abs and can make your workout more effective, so today we will look at the best abs machines for your lower ab workout and what exercises to do.
Using an abs bench for lower ab workout: doing inclined reverse crunches
Initial position: lie on your back on an declined abs bench, using your arms to stabilize your body, with your feets raised and your knees bent.
Exercise: now bring up your knees towards your chest, trying to raise your pelvis off the board. Hold for a second and lower your knees back to the initial position. Make sure not to lower your legs to far as this might cause you to overstretch your back and hurt your back.
The higher the angle of the incline, the more challenging the exercise is for your abs.
Decline leg raises with an abs bench
This is an advanced exercise. It works your abs a lot but it also really puts a lot of strain on your lower back. Personally, I would rather jump to the hanging knee raises and skip this exercise.
The exercise is the as the decline reverse crunch, but instead of having your knees bent, you have your legs straight at all times. You lift your legs up as far as possible, curling your torso towards your chest and then lower them again. Don’t lower your legs too far down as this will only increase the stress on your lower back.
Using ab balls for lower ab workout: knee tucks on stability ball
Initial position: you have your shins on an abs ball and are in push-up position (i.e. face down, rested on your arms and on your shins which are on the stability ball).
Exercise: use your abs to roll the ball closer to your hands. To do this, bring your legs towards your body, bending the knees and sticking your buttocks into the air.
By the way: you can also do the reverse crunches on the abs ball. On the abs ball you will obtain a greater stretch of the abdominals, so the exercise will be more effective. Lie on the ab ball, face up. Use your arms to stabilize your body and then lift and lower your legs.
Using ab straps for your lower ab workout
As we have seen in the article on ab straps, doing hanging knee raises and hanging leg raises are two great exercises to train your lower abs. Find the detailed description of the exercise here.
An ab ball, also called exercise ball or fitness ball can be an incredibly good abs machine and very effective for your abs workout. So, what exactly is an ab ball? An abs ball is a heavy-duty inflatable rubber ball on which you can sit or lie to perform your exercises. They come in different sizes so you can choose the one that fits your body size.
Using ab balls as ab exercise equipment has several advantages:
When doing a crunch on an ab ball your back stretches backward. In comparison with the standard crunch where you lie on the floor, on an abs ball you train your abdominals in a much wider range of motion and it has been scientifically proven that this trains your abdominals more.
You need to permanently maintain your balance on the ab ball. That means that you train a wide variety of muscles at the same time and your lower back and abdominals have to work harder to maintain stability while at the same time doing the crunch.
You gain increased balance, stability and coordination.
Many people find the workout on the stability ball more comfortable than the standard crunch on the floor.
Keep in mind that one of the main functions of your abdominals is not only to flex your torso, but to actually give stability to your torso, balancing your body and protecting your spine from injury. It is clear that a workout on the ab ball where you permanently need to adjust your balance is the perfect exercise for this objective and will give you true core strength.
With an abs ball you can train all your abdominal muscles (rectus abdominis, obliques and transverse abdominis).
How to train your abs on an ab ball:
When you start off exercising on an ball, make sure that you hold onto a wall in order to maintain the balance.
Sit on the abs ball, then move your feet forward while leaning backwards, until you reach the initial position in which you lie face upwards on the ball, your back stretched backwards over the ball.
Place your fingers behind your head.
Now do the crunch movement, flexing your torso approaching your rips towards your thighs.
There is no need to do a complete sit-up (the last part of the movement only trains your hip flexors and not your abdominals), it’s enough to get up to a position where your body is angled about 30º .
Now slowly lower your weight again until your back is again stretched over the exercise ball.
Watch out, unlike other abs machines, the ab ball does not provide any support for your neck so you need to stabilize it yourself. Many persons make the error of locking both hands behind their head and then pulling their head upwards, straining your neck. In order to avoid that, the best trick is not to lock the fingers of your hands. Place your fingers on each side of your head so that they just touch. When doing the exercise focus on maintaining the head in line with your spine, don’t tilt it forward.
The truth is that you can train your abs perfectly without an abs machine. And if you’re one of those hard-core “no pain, no gain” bodybuilders, you probably prefer the good ol’ crunch. In that sense, the floor is the cheapest ab exercise equipment you can find!
However, if you think about what is the most effective and most comfortable abs workout, then the abs machines come back into consideration. One of the most common reasons why exercisers stop doing crunches are neck and lower-back strain. Many abs machine models support your neck, thereby avoiding the neck stress and making your abs workout more comfortable. And when your workout is more comfortable, this might lead to that you do work out more and longer.
Also, on the floor in the initial position your back is just straight. But the most effective way to train your abs is to have them pre-streched, like for examplewhen you lie on an ab ball. So, using an abs machine you can train your abs more effectively.
As we haveseen in our last article, hanging abs exercises are great for lower ab workout and some even claim that hanging exercises are more effective thanlying exercises. You can do ahanging lower ab workout just hanging from a chin-up bar, or if your grip is not that resistant you can use ab straps.
And finally the mere act of investing into an abs machine might make you take your abs workout more seriously, be more motivated and determined to really get the maximum out of your investment.
So, you definitely can do just ab exercises on the floor, but using an abs machine can make your abs workout more varied, more fun and it can be more effective.
Can ab straps serve as abs machine? Well, it’s a little strange to describe a few straps you hang your body on as “machine”, but strangely enough they are the best tools for your lower ab workout.
As we have seen in a previous article, the abdominals are actually a group of muscles, including the “washboard”-like rectus abdominis. Some researchers claim that one of the best and most effective lower ab workouts targeting this muscle are hanging abs exercises, such as the hanging leg raise (see below for an explanation of how to perform hanging leg raises).
The tricky part is that – in order to perform hanging abdominal exercises – you need a strong grip, as you need to hold on to a chin up bar. Sustaining your body during the length of your lower ab workout takes a lot of strength in your hands and forearms, and many people don’t have grip to hold on to the chin up bar for that long.
That’swhere the ab straps come in. Ab straps are slings with a ring or carabiner onone end where the straps can be fixed to the chin up bar. You then just fityour arms into the cushioned slings and that way your body hangs on the straps, while your arms and shoulders support your weight and you can focus on your abs workout instead of fighting with your grip.
Now you’re ready to start your lower ab workout. First of all, it’s very important that when you train your abs with ab straps you need to do slow, controlled movements and you don’t swing. You don’t want that the momentum of your swing lifts your legs, you want to train your abs! Also, if you make any jerky movement you can easily strain your back, so you really need to make slow controlled movements and you should try to maintain your back in a neutral position as much as possible.
Hanging Knee Raises:
In the initial position you hang in the ab straps, arms parallel to the floor. Now you slowly raise your knees towards your chest while bending the knees until you reach a 90º angle, with your thighs parallel to the floor. Slowly lower your knees back to the initial position. Remember: no swinging!
Hanging Leg Raises:
This is an advanced exercise and it works your abs even more. From the same initial position, you slowly raise you straight legs without bending the knees until your legs are parallel to the floor. You hold them for a count of two and then slowly lower them back.
HangingTwists:
If you want to train your obliques, you can vary the previous exercises by twisting your body, i.e. while lifting your legs you lift them first to one side and then in the next movement to the opposite side.
Ab straps are relatively affordable, costing around 10-30 US$. The problem is that you need a chin-up bar to fix your ab straps on, so if you want to train at home and not in a gym you’ll also need to buy a bar.
In a nutshell, ab straps are a good way to trains your abs, especially your lowerabs. However, if you don’t perform the exercise correctly you can strain your back, so if you have any kind of back problem you’re probably better offlooking for a different ab exercise equipment.
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In order to be able to do a proper abs work out (no matter whether with an abs machine or with some other kind of abs program), we first need to have a (at least basic) understanding of the anatomy of the abdominal muscles. So, in this article we will explain the different muscle groups that are the abdominal muscles, and what their primary functions are.
Even though many people think of the abdominal muscles only of the “six pack” of the rectus abdominus, actually the abs also consist of the internal and external oblique abdominal and the transverse abdominis. These Latin names might look a little scary at first sight, but you will soon see that it aint’t that complicated.
The rectus abdominus is the muscle that runs from the pelvis all the way up to the ribs. Three fibrous bands crossing the rectus abdominus give it the washboard look that is so attractive. The function of this muscle is to bend the spine and bring the rib cage closer to the hips (as happens in the abdominal crunches). It also helps stabilize the spine. The rectus abdominus is one long muscle, so even though some people speak of upper and lower abdominals they are just referring to different areas of the same muscle.
The oblique abdominals are muscles situated on the sides of the rectus abdominus. Their function is to help bend and twist the torso and to make angled movements. Their fibers run diagonally – interior and exterior oblique abdominals run in opposite directions, so that a contraction of the interior obliques makes the torso bend to the same side, whereas the exterior obliques make it bend to the opposite side. They work together to make possible all kinds of rotation and tilting movements of the torso and are essential for the stabilization of the vertebral column.
The transverse abdominis is located underneath the obliques and wraps around the abdominal contents. It is a muscle that traditionally has been neglected, even though it’s crucial for the stability of the core and has an important aesthetic impact: it is called the “corset muscle”, as it is responsible for tucking in the organs of the abdomen and thus give us a flat stomach. It is like a natural weight belt, that stabilizes the spine and pelvis when we lift any kind of weights.
All these muscles together wrap around the abdominal area and provide stability and protection. Now that we know what muscles to focus on, we can start thinking about how to train them. So whereas the rectus abdominus can easily be trained with an abs machine, the transverse abdominis is best trained without any kind of equipment, just contracting the muscle in 3 sets of 30 seconds. The over time you can increase the duration and the number of sets.
Sidenote: the serratus anterior which is also colored in the anatomy chart actually does not belong to the abdominal muscles.
Buying an abs machine can get you on the road to getting these firm abdominals you dream of. But as with any investment, you want to chose carefully where you put your money. In our last article we looked at some advantages abdominal machines have and how they can help you with your lower ab workout to achieve these desired rock hard abs. Today we are going to look with detail what points you need to keep in mind when you consider buying your own ab exercise equipment.
We recommend you to first analyze whether you really want to buy an abs machine or whether maybe you prefer an abs workout program combined with a diet for burning belly fat. Many internet sites offer such programs or you can hire a personal trainer.
Not all abdominal machines really deliver what they promise, so before taking a decision on which product you want to buy, first consider these recommendations:
Check out a variety of different models and look which ones fit best your objectives and your general physical condition. You can get a personal trainer to recommend you or you can check out the reviews on different websites. Very soon you will also find product reviews on this site.
The abs machine should be adaptable to your height and weight.
In order to avoid any injuries, you need to make sure that the abdominal machine is not going to stress your back. This is especially important if you suffer from any kind of back problem, in this case you should consult your health provider for recommendations.
The abs machine should target all abdominal muscles (Upper ab and lower ab workout, abdominal oblique and transverses abdominis).
The abdominal machine should be comfortable to use and not cause any discomfort or cramping.
Check also whether it gives support to your neck.
You also need to check whether you actually have enough space at home for your new abs exercise equipment.
Keep in mind that contrary to what most people think, the most expensive abs machine is not necessarily the best. Unless you’re a hard-core bodybuilder, you should be able to find a suitable abs machine for around 100 US$ or less, so don’t spend too much!
Do abs machines work? We all dream of having this perfectly shaped sixpack: nicely ripped abdominals. And though we tell ourselves that it’s all about fitness, we know that we just want to look like these toned studs or the sexy girls with their flat stomach on the infomercials. It’s because these toned abs that we get from a proper ab workout are irresistibly attractive.
So, we start thinking about buying an abs machine, and that’s when all the confusion starts… So many manufacturers and brands out there: ab exerciser, ab cruncher, 6 second abs, ab lounger, to name only a few of them. Then we hear some trainers warn that some of these heavily advertised machines are a scam and our confusion only increases.
So, do abs machines really work? Well, yes they do, but only if you have your objectives very clear and know what an abs machine can do for you and what it can’t. In order to obtain these defined abs, firstly you need to strengthen and tone your abdominal muscles, so you need a good abs workout, considering also a good lower ab workout. For this goal ab exercise equipment can be of great help as we will see below. Of course, you can also train your abs without any machine, just with a good ab workout program.
Secondly, you also need to focus on burning belly fat in order to eliminate that excess fat that is presently hiding your abdominals. For this objective you need a proper nutrition, maybe a diet program and cardio exercises.
So, what are the true advantages of abs machines? Obviously they vary depending on each individual model, but some of the advantages include:
An abs machine can be especially good for beginners as some allow to adjust the intensity of the exercise.
Using an abdominal machine can reduce the stress on your neck and your back
Some provide a wider angle for the abdominal muscles to stretch
Using an ab exercise machine usually is more comfortable than just doing an abs work out on the floor
An abs machine can allow for an effective lower ab workout while not straining your back
Abdominal machines can help motivate you
Finally, having your own ab exercise equipment can be very convenient as you can spend just a few minutes a day exercising, without the need to leave your house.
These last points are especially important, considering that – as for any type of exercise – for your ab workout consistency is key. So, the easier, more convenient and more motivating you make it for yourself, the more probable it is that you are really going to follow through, exercise regularly and that way achieve these defined abs you are dreaming of.
To sum up: yes, abdominal machines can help you, but you also need to keep in mind burning belly fat. So, think about whether you really need an abs machine, and in case you decide to buy one make sure to keep in mind the recommendations you find on this blog.
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