The Best Abs Exercise To Get A Flat Stomach

So it’s probably the number one question asked. What is the best exercise to get a flat stomach or six pack abs? Well the scientific answer is the bicycle stomach crunch. Yep that’s it! The simple bicycle stomach crunch. No machines, no swiss fit balls, no videos just the floor and you!

A study conducted at the Biomechanics Lab at San Diego State University looked at 13 of the most popular abdominal workouts and ranked them from first to last, best to worst. Here they are:

The researches monitored each participants upper and lower abdominals as well as their obliques. The results of the 13 different exercises were ranked based on the electromyography activity recorded in each of the muscle areas. In other words on which exercise caused the most muscle activity.

Most of the 13 methods were proven to be effective at exercising the stomach muscles, some are just more effective than others. The research also determined that the exercises that require the most abdominal stabilization and body rotation generate the most most muscle activity in the obliques.

The study recommends choosing a few different exercises from the top half of the list and working out which ones work best for you. This is to help train different muscles, deal with boredom and to find out which exercise works best with your specific body type.

Interestingly the Ab Rocker was found to be 80% less effective than a normal stomach crunch and the ab roller not much more effective than a normal stomach crunch.

Check out my previous posts on how to perform the top 2 exercises: the bicycle crunch and the captains chair as well as the traditional stomach crunch.

A summary of the study can be found here: http://www.acefitness.org/getfit/studies/BestWorstAbExercises.pdf

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