If you’re looking to make your abdominal workouts as results based and efficient as possible, and you want to avoid wasting your time on the least productive exercises for your pectus abdominus (six pack) and obliques (side abs), then take a look at the effectiveness of these six exercises!
I have placed them in the order of which the American Council Of Exercise (ACE) found them to be, after concluding their detailed research which involved 30 healthy women and men aged between 20 to 45 years old. Some participants were occasional exercisers and the others worked out daily. Using electromyography (EMG) equipment researchers monitored each of the participants muscle activity as they were put through a thorough course of 13 exercises that target the midsection and they also measured the rectus femoris to indicate activity in the hip flexors!
This is important because high activity levels in this area suggest an exercise is either being performed incorrectly or uses other muscles outside of the target areas of the abs and obliques (midsection). Now the base line comparison for all exercises was the traditional crunch or basic sit up (legs bent with feet flat on the floor) which had a score of 100! Exercises were than ranked by average amount of EMG activity recorded in each of the muscle areas compared to the traditional crunch.
The Results: After extensive data collection and analysis the researchers found that exercises that require constant abdominal stabilization, as well body rotation, generated the most activity in the obliques. In simple terms they concluded which exercise is the best for both the abs and obliques in one go!
Now take into account the EMG scored the traditional crunch/sit up as 100 in both abdominal and oblique activity, the results are as follows…
Top scoring abdominal rectus exercise activity!
An article on the best abdominal and oblique exercises using equipment will follow in the future.
I have put together a video with me performing each exercise in the order of the top 6 scoring exercises for the abdominal rectus which you can view here…
What do you think?