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3 Ab Exercises Every Man Must Know

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Have you ever had a six pack? If not, you should change that. Honestly, it’s a simple process. Depending on how much body-fat you have – it may take some time. But the time will pass regardless, so why not just do it. On top of that, having a solid core will benefit you in numerous other ways. For example, one of the leading causes of lower back pain is a weak core (1).

Other benefits include (2):

  • Improved balance
  • Injury prevention
  • Enhanced stabilization during dynamic movements
Definition: The Core
The core is comprised of more than just your abdominals. It includes the lumbar spine (lower back), pelvis, and hip joint (3). It literally forms the core of your body. But I know you really just want that six-pack, and that is just what I will give you.

How To Get A Six Pack

Abs are built in the gym, and sculpted in the kitchen. – A Wise Man

I do not care what you heard – no specific exercise or magical vegetable will get you a six-pack. You must reach a low enough level of body-fat so that your abdominal muscles are visible. Period. That is the only way. The muscles are always there, they are just covered by a layer of fat for most people. In a future article, I will discuss what a low body-fat diet consists of.

That said, building larger abs in the gym will allow them to become visible at higher levels of bodyfat, but I still do not advocate spending a huge amount of your time in the gym doing ab exercises. It is simply inefficient and your time is better spent on other lifts. The focus of ab work should be on strengthening your core as a whole.

The Only 3 Ab Exercises You Will Ever Need

The simple fact of the matter is that if you are already performing a variety of compound exercises (and you should be!), your abs and core are already being worked and strengthened, albeit indirectly.

For example, your abdominals are a major stabilizer during the squat. A sufficiently strong core is necessary to move any significant amount of weight. Think about it this way – if your core is unable to support the weight you place on your back – your body will simply fold.

However, I still do recommend working your abs directly. Next, I will go over the 3 basic types of abdominal movements, and my favorite exercise for each one. These movements cover all of the major muscles of the abdominal region. Strengthen your abs by progressing in these exercises and you will both reap the practical benefits listed above as well as build stronger, bigger ab muscles, allowing them to become visible at a higher level of body fat.

I suggest doing just 2-3 sets of each exercise per week. You may complete them all on the same day or on separate days. I work out three to four days per week and perform one ab exercise per workout, at the end of the workout.

1. Flexion And Extension: The Hanging Leg Raise

The most common type of ab exercise. You flex and extend your core to work your abdominal region, with a focus on the rectus abdominis (aka. the six pack).

Progression (Advance when you can perform over 10-15 repetitions at a given level)

1. Raise your knees in a dip station, where your back is supported.
2. Raise your knees, hanging from a pull up bar.
3. Raise your extended legs, hanging from a pull up bar (pictured above).
4. Raise your extended legs, with a dumbbell in between your feet.

Other flexion/extension exercises: Decline sit-up, sit-up.

2. Rotation: Plate Twist

Rotational exercises work your whole abdominal region but focus on the obliques (internal and external). Sitting down, simply hold your hands together, or a weight, above your torso, lift your feet off the floor, and move the weight side-to-side, almost touching the floor on each repetition. Progress by both adding repetitions and weight.

Other rotational exercises: Cable Rotation, side dumbbell crunch.

3. Stabilization: Plank

Stabilization exercises work your entire abdominal region, but the stress is placed upon the transverse abdominis – the deepest abdominal muscle that wraps around your spine. This muscle is responsible for a the majority of your overall balance and stability, so it must not be neglected. Progress by planking for longer durations, and then planking on a stability ball.

General Guidelines

1. Draw in your navel (ie. pull your belly button towards your spine) throughout each movement. It increases pelvic stabilization and transverse abdominis activation (4).
2. Brace your core (ie. flex/tighten your core/abs). Helps properly recruit and activate the core muscles (3).

Read More: The Romanian Deadlift

References

1. Hodges, Paul W., and Carolyn A. Richardson. “Inefficient muscular stabilization of the lumbar spine associated with low back pain: a motor control evaluation of transversus abdominis.” Spine 21.22 (1996): 2640-2650.
2. Barr, Karen P., Miriam Griggs, and Todd Cadby. “Lumbar stabilization: core concepts and current literature, Part 1.” American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitation 84.6 (2005): 473-480.
3. Arokoski, Jari P., Taru Valta, and Olavi Airaksinen. “Back and abdominal muscle function during stabilization exercises.” Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation 82.8 (2001): 1089-1098.
4. Richardson, Carolyn A., et al. “The relation between the transversus abdominis muscles, sacroiliac joint mechanics, and low back pain.” Spine 27.4 (2002): 399-405.

44 thoughts on “3 Ab Exercises Every Man Must Know”

    1. Totally agree.
      But David does say in the article: “[N]o specific exercise or magical vegetable
      will get you a six-pack. You must reach a low enough level of body-fat
      so that your abdominal muscles are visible. Period. That is the only
      way. The muscles are always there, they are just covered by a layer of
      fat for most people. In a future article, I will discuss what a low
      body-fat diet consists of.”
      Maybe he should have increased the font size of the above passage five-fold, or used ALL CAPS, or highlight it in red, or animate it, or all of the above?

  2. Excellent post, effective tips. I find that squats (as mentioned in the article) helps with building ab muscles. In order for you to feel it though, you must tighten your abs throughout the exercise. Deadlifts are effective at working the core just as well; thus, I think I would include the three aforementioned ab exercises after perfoming my squat lifts for the most effective ab development routine.

    1. Good point – the same bracing and drawing in manuevers that I suggested for proper ab development and recruitment should be used in other exercises like the squat for the same reason.

  3. Wearing a lifting belt while doing your major lifts allows you clench the abdominal muscles more effectively, with increased force. This not only better stabilizes the spine under load, it also trains those muscles better. With a belt you can lift more, and unlike a squat suit, bench shirt or smith machine, the increase is due your greater muscular activation, not outside mechanical assistance

    1. Further to the pro belt message, by wearing a tight belt, you restrict the space the diaphram can expand, increasing pressure when filled with air. This increased air pressure provides support for your trunk when squatting.

    2. If you use a belt, do enough unbelted sets so that you don’t forget the muslce activation patterns of the lifts unassisted. Otherwise, if you find yourself on a trip without your belt, or your belt wears out and you replace it with a slightly different model, or your waist size changes necessitating a belt adjustment; you risk finding yourself overloading untrained muscles, potentially damaging your back.
      Personally, from seeing “regular guys” start lifting heavy with and without belts, I have never noticed enough difference to warrant their use. Most people are so darned far from potential in all the big lifts, that simply doing them the simplest and most convenient way possible (lessens temptation to skip or cheat), would be my advice. Squats as deep as one can, Deads with mixed grip and no straps etc. All barefoot or in socks on flat ground. The less complications the better. The less futzing with extraneous variables, the more focus there can be on just doing the darned work, with a bit more weight each time. Which is the only way to make progress over a long enough time for it to be meaningful.

  5. For plankin how long should each rep be and how much time to add to progress
    so 10-15 reps for each excercise once a week and try and advance everytime

  6. How the fuck you are gonna have a picture of Bruce Lee up there and not include dragon flags?! You don’t need three exercises you just need one. And you can do without rotational exercises.

    1. Good luck to the average man doing dragon flags. And i dont advise ignoring rotational exercises as you will sacrifice functional strength.

    1. Any excercise using lots of weight above the waistline, help build abs. Try some waiter’s walks until failure (outside on a forgiving surface.)… Overhead lockouts are good too, but in any both-arms-above-head exercise with lots of weight, be careful not to cause hernias. One handed is generally both safer, and better (asymmetric loading involves more stabilization).
      Another neat ab stabilization exercise, is assymetric bench presses. 2 45s on one side, 1 on the other. Just make sure the load is not so lopsided that the bar levers off the rack when put down, even in a maximally unfavorable position. The downside to this, is all the blindfolded-cockswings-on-yogaballs guys in the gym starts thinking you are one of them……

    2. Thanks for mentioning that. Anybody can develop their abdominal muscles, but to get them to show you have to shed the fat and water.

  8. Ballroom dance works the abs nicely, plus you get to feel up ladies while you’re doing it.
    It may interest you to know that Bruce Lee was an accomplished ballroom dancer. Which is how he got the abs, not with that sissy “kung-fu” stuff.

    1. This may seem like a trivial comment, but it isn’t. Latin dancing works the same way. Heinz Ward had talked of how hard the exertion was for Dancing with The Stars. He felt it was more exertion than p90X.

  9. I agree with Knucle Dragger. Diet.
    Read Absolutions by Shawn Phillips.
    He wrote that when people ask him what muscles should be worked to obtain good abs, he replied “All of them”.
    I don’t disagree with the exercises in this list. I most heartily agree with the Squat.
    Diet is 2/3s of the battle. Exercise cannot overcome bad diet. Looking at the calories burned by 1 sit-up, it would take 1100 sit-ups to burn the calories in one McDonalds Super Sized order of fries. You don’t have that much time that can you waste overcoming diet.
    So Shawn explains that you should grow muscles to burn the Calories that you eat. At rest, your eyes consume a large of amount of calories you consume. The next consumer of calories is spent maintaining your musculature, both at rest and during exercise.
    So bigger muscle load on your body will consume more of the calories you eat and less will go to fat. When I have larger muscles, I am hungry almost all the time, that sort of hunger you would have as a kid after an afternoon in a swimming pool.
    Your thighs contain the largest muscle groups in your body. Grow them by doing “heavy weight” lifting routines with your thighs, meaning, you should lift enough weight that you “fail” to complete the set.
    Then eat ample protein to feed the muscles. Then do not over-train those muscles such that cortisol is produced and testosterone production is inhibited.
    Then that thigh muscle will grow. And it will burn more calories, both in the repair activities after lifting, and in the maintenance of the muscle given the size of it, and in cardio exercise of the muscle between lifting sessions. And with a good diet, you will begin to lose fat around your abs because those big ole thigh muscles are gluttons for calories.
    So the closer your diet is to the level of calories that would be burned by your body, and with bigger “larger muscle” groups that you have to consume those calories, then the less will be converted to fat and stored on your abs.
    You can expect a predictable growth in muscle mass per day of training. But since those thighs are such a larger muscle group that any other, you get more “bang for your buck” by training them as conscientiously or more so then even your chest or your arms.
    The payoff will be in a smaller waist.
    And your chest will look correspondingly larger given the contrast with your waist, meaning your Chest/Waist ratio will be larger. And you will appear larger for that fact.
    Your chest will only grow at a sustained predictable rate. You can shrink your waist at much quicker rate with diet and exercises for your thighs.
    So you can get a bigger visual payoff with diet and thigh work much quicker than concentrating on your upper body.
    And I am writing several post for ROK about testosterone and cortisol as sexual signals to women. Having musculature and a muscular silhouette a visual cue of testosterone to women. Cortisol is represented in fat and also is a visual cue to women of higher levels of estrogen in your body.
    Having fat is a cue that you don’t have testosterone, that you have cortisol.
    Tests that show the preferred male body silhouette for women is that they prefer muscular then brawny, then Slim, and lastly “Chubby”.
    When ovulating there is a bigger gap between Brawny and Slim. And closer when not ovulating. But they handily reject “Chubby” in both contexts.
    And other evidence I show is that they “despise” or more viscerally reject then they “accept” or “like”. They “dislike” men they are not attracted twice as much as they “like” men they are attracted to.
    How can say that again more accurately.
    Here I’ll just give some numbers. I have a chart of traits.
    The traits they “liked”, that attracted them, had values around “7”.
    The traits they rejected had “dislike” values of 13-15.
    Ok. meaning they “disliked” what they disliked twice as much as they “liked” what they liked.
    That like saying I like chocolate but I hate beets more than I like chocolate. Or maybe even better, I like getting back rubs, but I hate hitting shin far more.
    The primary biological role of women is that they are “egg protectors” and it is far safer to reject “bad” genes, quickly, off of visual signals and to skeptically accept good genes, then continue to press for congruence that those good genes, indeed are good. So they reject quickly, completely, and viscerally. They accept slowly, and continue to look for reasons to reject.
    Understand.
    So it is better for you to rid yourself of what they dislike more than it is to gain or have what they like.
    So get rid of fat before, and more importantly, than beefing up muscle.
    My proof in this this is that look how much women value “six pack abs” over how much they value big guns or a massive chest.
    So, diet, thighs. Heavy weight, twice a week for the thighs, squats. Also dead lifts . 10 grams of protein daily for every 20 pounds of body weight.
    On alternate lifting days, Lift doing exercises for waist and back. My trainer has bend over, keeping the legs straight, with a dumb bell with weight on the ground than straighten up lifting the weight with my waist and back. He does more push-ups than planks. And sit-ups on an incline bench. The other exercises in this post are fine. You get a lot of work on the abs with squats and dead lifts as stabilizers of your back and waist when you work your thighs. Pretty much anything that involves using legs that involves holding or controlling weights with your hands is going to have to connect that force through you midsection.
    There aren’t ton of exercises for abs. They don’t need to get bigger. You need to just get the fat off of what you have. And unfortunately, you lose everywhere else first, and abs last.
    So diet is more important.
    No sodas. No beer. No deserts. No butter. No fat that isn’t abs-olutely necessary. Eat little amounts when you do eat. Eat more frequently but smaller quantity.
    Get a smaller plate. A protein, a carb, a vegetable, each serving no larger than the palm of your hand.

    1. Good post but I have a couple quibbles. First, experiments have not shown that resting muscle muss burns calories.
      Second, doing heavy squats beyond a certain point will thicken up one’s waist and actually compromise the ideal male “v” shape aesthetic. A lot of powerlifters have bulging external obliques and upper thigh muscles that almost form a feminine hour-glass figure.

      1. The fact that you associate powerlifters with feminine, is quite the commentary on contemporary US females…… 🙂

  11. Punches in and around the occular sockets tend to create a cut appearance too. It takes at least two days from punch to lines in the gut. It’s an old spy trick.

  12. As an american student studying abroad in Scotland in 2008, I became broke during the economic crash. The dollar exchange went into the toilet, and i was literally a starving student, living off of baked beans on buttered bread. I continued to use the university gym however, and for the first time in my life, I had a slashed 8-pack, not six, an 8-pack. But if anyone is familiar with the Scottish diet (custard, trifles, ciders, deep fried snickers bar- I ate them all when offered), they know that the scots are not known as the healthiest eaters, so I don’t know what happened. When I came back to the usa, my big gut promptly returned. I’ve improved my diet since, but those abs never came back. wha’happened??

  13. I have read numerous books, articles and the like on the subject of getting a six pack, and I think this one is the best so far. Accurate, succint and to the point. Nicely done. Will be checking out your blog.

  14. Great post. But I still think there needs to be some cardio element like HIIT to speed the process up. Yes/No?
    Also, in my humble opinion, I don’t see any reason why the Plank should be done for less than a minute, since I see people asking that question.

    1. Cardio will burn calories which can assist in weight loss, but honestly eating less is more effective. Granted cardio has numerous other health benefits – so yes I would agree.

      1. Cardio also makes you in better shape, making life “easier to live.” It also allows you to live like a human being; enjoying good food ad drink, instead of sitting around like some chump counting the calories i ones watered down light beer.
        No point overstuffing oneself, but being in sufficient shape so that one can live a life allowing one to eat normally without turning into a blimp, is a good way to go. Even if that leads one to plateau at a lean muscle weight 3 lbs lower than if one focused purely on muscle building.

    1. What killed Bruce Lee? Was it a toxic cocktail of painkillers and steroids? Drugs? It baffles me what could have gone wrong with a top human specimen like that. Well, whatever it was, I’m sure Jackie Chan and Jet Li took note to insure that it didn’t happen to them.

  16. For a real simple ab exercise that works, situps on an Ab-Mat (sold cheaply at Amazon and other places) is a very meaningful improvement over the flat ground version. The added range of motion is a big benefit, with few to no downsides.
    Abslings are another dirt cheap way of making abwork easier and more effective for most people, as they allow one to take grip endurance out of the picture for hanging raises etc.

  17. Carbs: Sugars and starches. I don’t care who you are, cut your carbs to less than 100 grams a day, get sufficient protein and vitamins/minerals, and the fat will melt off. Most people are simply too weak to achieve this. It’s not easy, but with sufficient will power (that means NO CHEATING), it can be done.

  18. Regarding Squats. Are you guys talking about bodyweight squats or with a barbell? I do them every morning when I’m brushing my teeth. Would be nice to work abs into this.

  19. I like to program my ab training in one of three ways: One separate abdominal day, 2-3 exercises after two of my major lifting days (I’m on a 4- day split), or doing one or two ab exercises every day.

  20. What others have already stated: abs exercises strengthen the abs but you won’t get a visual six pack until your body fat is less than 10%.

  21. add a fourth to that list: the standing bridge. Abs are a core muscle, so the lower back also needs to be strong

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