We all know that defined abs look great. Who doesn’t want the kind of six-pack you see on television, in movies or in magazines?

What we don’t always consider are the wider health benefits that strong abdominal muscles bring. Having strong abs and obliques creates greater back and neck strength, thereby decreasing back and neck pain, strains and other muscular problems. I suffered myself from back and hip pain brought on through a sports-related injury to my knee and, through physiotherapy, massively decreased my pain and discomfort through simple abdominal exercises.

A recent study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) tested the most popular exercises that we use to improve our abs and obliques and came up with some very interesting results, which I will detail below.

Results Based On Activity In Rectus Abdominus (Abs)

Results Based On Activity In The Obliques

Now, don’t worry if this looks a little alien, I’ll quickly explain what this means.

A traditional crunch is given a rating of 100% and this is used as the baseline for the amount of activity it shows in your abdominals and obliques when you perform that exercise. Each other exercise is then given a percentage based on whether more or less activity occurs in those muscular regions when you perform that particular exercise in comparison to performing the traditional crunch.

Basically, when you are looking to strengthen your abs, performing the bicycle maneuver will create 148% more activity in your abs than if you were to perform a traditional crunch. Therefore, it is a better exercise to use.

On the flipside, using an Ab Rocker is only 21% as effective as using a traditional crunch when trying to improve your abs.

With regards to exercising your obliques, using the captain’s chair exercise is 210% more effective than using a traditional crunch. On the other hand, again the Ab Rocker is less effective, giving you only 74% as effective an exercise as with the normal traditional crunch.

It’s an interesting study to say the least and sheds light on the methods we all use and the effect that we are actually getting from each one.

Keep in touch as next time I’ll go through the best ab workouts and show you how to do them properly to maximise the effect.