The 5 Best Crunch-Free Ab Exercises (and Why They Are the Best)

Looking to get lean, flat, and firm abs in a hurry? If so, you’re likely looking into all the best ab exercises that can be done to help you achieve success with this goal. As you go about the search however, it’s important that you keep a few things in mind.

First and foremost, performing endless amounts of crunches on the abdominal mat is not going to be the best way to bring about a fast rate of results. Do this and you are going to be disappointed. The problem with crunches is that first they do very little to actually burn calories and get your abs fully contracting. They may stimulate them to some extent, but it’s going to be relatively weak compared to what you could be obtaining.

Second, since they burn so few calories, they are going to do very little to actually get you leaner and in order to see six pack abs, that is where your focus needs to be. You can have the strongest and most developed abs ever, but if you have a thick layer of body fat covering those abs, they are not going to be visible at all.

To get lean, you need to be placing more overall focus on the diet element of things, so it’ll be critical you aren’t missing out here. Your diet should be centered around plenty of lean proteins, green vegetables, healthy fats, with a small amount of fruit added in for extra energy. Grains and high carb foods should be minimized so that you aren’t providing extra energy to the body that will likely be stored as excess body fat.

Once you have your diet in place, then you should begin looking at your workouts and what you can do on that side of the equation to optimize the progress that you see.Let’s take a look at some of the guiding principles that you should use as you go about program generation with your core workouts.

Instability Focused Exercise

The first thing that you should know and remember at all times is that you are going to see the absolute best results when you can add some degree of instability to the workout session that you’re doing. Whenever your body is in an instable position, this is going to cause the core muscles to have to sit up and contract that much harder to keep you balanced. Therefore, you’ll not only get more total muscle recruitment, but the muscle contractions will be that much stronger as well. It’s a win-win as far as ab strength and development goes.

Added Resistance/Weight

Second, you’ll also want to aim to incorporate in some resistance or weight based movements. While you don’t want to take the weight too heavy as adding bulk in the core region won’t be desirable, you should add the resistance every so often on select exercises to help increase the intensity and make sure that your muscles are being challenged sufficiently. Just as the other muscles in your body need an overloading stimulus to be fully stimulated, the core muscles do as well.

Maximum Muscle Fiber Recruitment

Another point to pay attention to as you select and choose the best abdominal exercises to incorporate into your workout program is that you want to try and recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. As mentioned, this is a big reason why crunches aren’t all that effective. They really aren’t going to stimulate all that many muscle fibers themselves, so they do very little to strengthen the core. When you can get your core as well as other muscles in the body working as well, you’ll get a far greater response. This is why in some cases the main compound lifts are actually better for core development than other isolated abdominal exercises. They simply target more muscles overall, thus producing the greatest training response possible. You’ll strengthen your core as you perform them and burn up far more calories as you do, thus accelerating the rate of fat loss progress taking place.

Good Variety

Finally, the last requirement of an effective abdominal workout program is that you have a good amount of variety mixed into the session as well. Your abs are going to be relatively fast to respond and adapt to any exercises you’re doing for them, so this may mean that you are going to need to keep changing things up so that you see an optimal rate of progress. If you continually do the same exercise over and over again, your results will plateau and you’ll just maintain the status quo. Try doing new exercises – attacking the abs from new angles, using a different pattern of motion, and so on if you want to keep making good progress. You should aim to change at least one element of your core workout program with each and every session that you complete in order to keep shocking the muscle tissues.

So now that you know the guiding principles behind creating the most effective core workout, it’s time to look at the top movements that you should be including in your program plan.

Plank On An Exercise Ball

The first great exercise is the plank on the exercise ball. The exercise ball is a perfect way to add some instability to your workout program and keep your muscle fibers fully engaged throughout the entire movement. Since you will be maintaining the plank position the entire time you do this exercise, this is going to be classified as an isometric contraction movement. Adding the exercise ball to the mix, either by placing the hands up on the ball or the feet up on it instead, will further add to the instability, really engaging every single muscle fiber running up and down the core.

Decline Twisting Sit-Up

Second, the decline twisting sit-up is the next good exercise that you should be performing on a regular basis. This exercise is superior for working the oblique muscles since it has that side to side twist to it, and will also work the front abs as well as they direct the sit-up motion. This exercise is also a good one to consider doing with the added weight as we mentioned earlier as it will provide far more resistance for you to be working against. Make sure when you do this you perform it in a very slow and controlled movement pattern to keep full tension on the abdominal muscles the entire time. Alternate between which side you’re twisting to so that you work both equally.

Prone Ball Roll-In

The next exercise that’s great for core strength development is the prone ball roll-in. Again, this movement has the instability factor added into it as you’ll be performing it with the feet up on the exercise ball. As you do this movement pattern, make sure that you are thinking of just contracting the abs as you move through the pattern of movement, rather than allowing the lower body leg muscles or upper body muscles to take over control. Bring the ball as close into the chest as possible, pause, and then reverse to complete each rep. If you really want a challenge with this exercise, lift one leg up off the ball as you do it to increase the instability even further.

Push-Ups On The Ball

The next exercise, also incorporating the ball into play is the push-up on the exercise ball. This movement works off the ‘compound movement’ principle since it’ll have you working a number of muscles at once including the chest, shoulders, triceps, biceps, as well as the core. You’re going to notice your core muscles contracting harder than ever as you perform this exercise to keep yourself stabilized and your chest muscles may also really get a serious workout as you do it as well. Since they will act as stabilizers as well as main movers to direct the movement pattern, the stimulus they receive will be taken to a much higher level.

Single Leg Squat

The next compound movement to consider performing as you go about your core training is the single leg squat. The single leg squat is going to be one that demands you maintain good balance the entire time, which engages the core muscles to their full extent. In addition to that, it will also require a high amount of lower body strength as well since the muscles will really have to be contracting to lower you down into the squat position and then back up to the start once again. Make sure to perform equal reps on both sides with this exercise so you don’t suffer from muscular imbalances.

So there you have the main exercises to consider adding to your abdominal core workout program. Do these next time you’re in the gym and you will see excellent strength benefits and be one step closer to six-pack-ab status.