Getting abdominal definition isn’t easy! It takes exercise to hypertrophy the abdominal muscles and a strong focus on nutrition to shed abdominal fat. Women often fail to get defined abs because they focus too much on abdominal exercises and not enough on reducing body fat. Most women won’t see abdominal definition until they drop their body fat percentage below 20%. Even if two people have an equal body fat percentage, one may have defined abs and the other not. The reason? People store their abdominal fat differently. You may store most of your fat in your hips or thighs while another person may store it in their mid-section.
Regardless of where you store body fat, you need exercise to hypertrophy the rectus abdominis muscles, the abdominal muscles you see when you look at someone from the front. Some ab exercises are better than others for enlarging these muscles and getting them to “pop,” while others are less effective or almost worthless. Those are the ones you want to avoid. Are you wasting your time doing these ab exercises?
The Effectiveness of Abdominal Exercises Based on EMG
One way to look at how effective an abdominal exercise is would be to measure how much that exercise activates the abdominal muscles, particularly the rectus abdominis muscles that vertically run down each side of your pelvis. These are the ones to focus on if you want abdominal definition. Researchers use electromyography to measure abdominal muscle activation while subjects perform a variety of abdominal exercises.
In a study, researchers from the American Council on Exercise used electromyography to measure ab activation while 30 healthy men and women did 13 different ab exercises. These were:
- Bicycle crunches
- Captain’s chair
- Crunches on an exercise ball
- Vertical leg crunch
- Torso Track
- Longarm crunch
- Reverse crunch
- Crunch with heel push
- Ab Roller
- Hover
- Traditional crunch
- Exercise tubing pull
- Ab Rocker
If you look at the order these exercises are in, you’ll see the most effective exercise, bicycle crunches, topped the list, while ab rockers were the worst. In other words, exercises near the bottom of the list activated the abdominal muscles the least.
Based on this, you probably shouldn’t bother doing ab rockers. If you’re not familiar with this exercise, ab rockers use a portable device that allows you to do crunches with your head and neck supported by a pad. When you’re lying down a bar extends across your upper chest and you hold on to the bar as you crunch. However, all of that support makes the exercise easier and reduces how hard your abs have to work. So, it’s not surprising that the ab rocker isn’t the best exercise for getting a six-pack.
Second, from the bottom, the exercise tubing pull also falls short in terms of ab muscle activation. This exercise uses resistance band tubing with handles at each end. To do this movement, wrap the tube around a door or pole so the handles are at chest height. Place one foot in front of the other for stability. Grab the handles and back away from the door far enough so that your arms are almost straight and there’s a slight tension in the tubing. Now, pull the handles of the tubing back until they’re slightly behind you. Then, slowly bring your arms back to the starting point. This exercise is effective for working the triceps and mid-back and you get some abdominal activation when you pull back, but it falls short of most other exercises on the list.
Are you surprised to see the traditional crunch near the bottom of the list? According to EMG activity from the study, switching to bicycle crunches will give you more abdominal “bang for the buck,” since bicycle crunches top the list. It’s important to know that crunches can be hard on the back and neck if you do them with poor form. That’s why it’s better to do a variety of ab exercises rather than focusing only on crunches.
Although the traditional ab crunch fell short of other exercises on the list, another ACE study found that traditional crunches were more effective than the Ab Wheel, Ab Circle Pro, front plank, and side plank for activation of the upper and lower rectus abdominis muscles.
What about another popular exercise, planks? Although planks are a good movement for working the entire core, as a stand-alone abdominal exercise they fall short. However, there are so many plank variations that make the exercise harder, so try some of the advanced versions.
The hover is also low on the list of effective ab exercises. A hover is similar to a plank. but with a twist: you bear weight on your elbows rather than your hands. As you hover, your body is closer to being parallel to the ground and this forces your abdominal muscles to work harder to hold the position. When you compare planks and hovers, based on EMG studies, the hover activates the abdominal muscles more and also other muscles in the core.
Despite being in the lower third of the list, hovers and planks have their advantages. They work all of the muscles in your core more efficiently than many other abdominal exercises and they don’t require you to flex your spine or neck. This makes them safer if you have a history of neck or back pain.
So, despite some exercises activating the ab muscles more, the exercises that are best for you may vary. If you have back pain, exercises that don’t require spinal flexion are safer and more comfortable. Plus, you may find certain exercises easier or harder to perform. It’s the exercises you can do safely and with excellent form that matters most.
The Bottom Line
Now you have a better idea of which exercises activate your ab muscles the most based on EMG data. However, it’s best to perform a variety of ab exercises so you work your muscles at different angles and place varying types of stimulus on them. The worst thing you can do is to do only traditional crunches. Add some variety! Keep this in mind when planning your ab routine.
References:
- org. “American Council on Exercise (ACE)-sponsored Study Reveals Best and Worst Abdominal Exercises”
- org. “New Study Proves Traditional Crunch Still More Effective Than Popular Abdominal Equipment, Exercise Trends”
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