Advanced Ab Exercises

There are many advanced ab exercises that are best done in the safety of the gym. Some of these require specialist equipment, and it is far less expensive to join a gym for a few dollars a month than to buy your own equipment. Most of the equipment needed to exercise your abs is fairly expensive, but there are one or two exceptions.

Generally the rule is that the more expensive the machine, the less effective it is at toning your abs. Many of the most advanced ab exercises that will really help you to build muscle and burn fat can be done on simple machines, like the one called a “captain’s chair”. You might have seen this at your local health club – it has a flat back and foot rests that are raised off the floor, and two arms rests that should be adjusted to chest height if you are standing on the machine.

To use this machine, simply place your arms on the arm rests to get a good balance and lift your knees up to your chest. Remember not to arch your back, and do not try to do many reps quickly as this can make you “bounce” on the captain’s chair and cause some serious damage to your hips and your back. Advanced ab exercises do tend to have more chance to cause injury if done incorrectly. They are also far more likely to be done incorrectly in the first place, and so it is always better to consult a personal trainer before trying any of these exercises for the first time.

One of the best advanced ab exercises that will really push you to your limit is the full vertical crunch. To perform this exercise, lie on your back with your legs at ninety degrees to the ground. Cross your ankles and clasp your hands behind your head. Contract your abdominal muscles to both lift your shoulder blades off the ground and push your feet up towards the ceiling. Remember not to pull on your neck with your arms or use your back to push your legs up.

This exercise can be extremely challenging, and frustrating if your position is not entirely correct. Remember that if it feels like you are doing it wrong, you almost certainly are. Get a friend who knows the exercise to watch you the first time to make sure you are doing it right. This is one of the advanced ab exercises that can really work both your upper and lower abdominals at the same time.

Variations of this can be done which work either the lower or upper abdominals individually. You can do this by either keeping your legs stationary while lifting your shoulder blades, or keeping your back flat while pushing your feet upwards. Although both of these are really effective in building muscle and trimming fat, using the full vertical crunch will do it in half the time if done correctly.

There are many machines in the average gym that claim to let you perform advanced ab exercises, but many of these put strain in the wrong places of your body to do so. One of the most popular machines for years actually relied on the neck muscles to move a lot of the weight of the machine! Personal trainers stopped using machines like this years ago, and now most of them recommend resistance training. Most specialists would in fact recommend doing advanced ab exercises in small sets, and spending longer than usual on each repetition. This is now claimed to be one of the most effective ways of both burning fat and building muscle mass quickly and easily.