So, you see these Russian twists, well,
yeah, they're going to have to go.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com.
What you see behind me is a bunch of different ab exercises that you likely recognize because
you're either doing them right now or you have in the past. However, after today's video,
you're going to get rid of a few of them. Today, I'm going to rank the ab exercises from
worst to best, and there can only be one best. I'm going to help you to find the exercises that
going to give you the most bang for your buck and give you the results that you're looking for.
So, in beginning our ranking here, we start at the bottom. And unfortunately, the bottom here
means the ab exercises that you might want to stop doing. And the criteria for all of these exercises
in terms of grading them is to consider A. How multidimensional are they? Are they hitting just
one single area or are they helping us to do more than just one thing because the abs are capable
of much more? Do they have scalability to them, allowing beginners all the way up to advance,
to be able to work within their ability level on that exercise? Or do they require a lot
of equipment that might make it something that is not possible for a lot of us to do? So,
that being said, I start with another criteria, and that is the exercises that people screw up
often and the first one is the Russian Twist.
Now, I like the Russian Twist, but again, this
is done wrong more often than maybe any other ab exercise in the gym. And because it's so popular
and common, we have to put it in this category. And the reason is that people turn this into
something called a Russian Tap. They don't do any rotation at all and we know that the abs prefer
to control and produce rotation on their own. However, if you're just tapping your hands left
or right, all you're doing is an isometric hold, which is not going to get the job done.
If you can ensure that you were getting the right rotation by driving your elbow back behind
your body, almost as if you're rowing your arm back and then therefore turning this exercise
into the way it should be performed, then sure, it's going to bump up into a higher category.
But once again, many people don't get this right, even when they know the cue, they still can't
execute the right way. So therefore, we have to put the big red X through the Russian Twist.
The next exercise in this worst category is one that suffers from the same problem unfortunately,
it's the Bicycle Crunch. It's supposed to be a rotational ab exercise as well. It's supposed to
also tie in some of the obliques. But if you just flip your elbow side to side and pistoning your
legs up and down with nothing more than your hip flexors, that I'm sorry, you're not doing what
you should be doing for your abs. Of course, there's another way to do this exercise as
well and I pointed it out many times before that would jump this up into a much better
category. And that would be by concentrating on the actual rotation of the shoulders and not
worrying about the elbows. But many of us still, even with that proper cue in mind, don't get
this right. And because of how commonly performed and mis performed, it is we have to put the big
red X through the Bicycle Crunch as well.
And so, if you watch any Athlean-X ab
video before, by the way, if you have it, where the hell have you been? You likely
know how I feel about the Dumbbell Side Bend. I don't like it and there's a lot of reasons why
not. It belongs in the worst category because it's an inferior ab exercise. As a matter of fact, it
does more for your obliques than it does your abs. And even there is not effectively the best thing
you can do. And if you even put two dumbbells in your hands to perform this, you're just turning
yourself into a human seesaw. But more so than that is what happens at the low back when people
perform this. You can create some compression on the side that you're leaning towards and you
can create tightness in the muscle called the quadratus lumborum, which oftentimes gets
tight and leads to chronic low back pain. For all these reasons, guys, you should
probably have expected the Dumbbell Side Bend is also going to earn the big red X.
So, the exercise behind me are dwindling and we're still not out of the worst category, which
should be a bit of a wakeup call. And I target next to one that's right here, dead center in the
middle of the screen and it's the Plank. And look, I understand that this exercise can be beneficial
for some, but that some is very few. And what I mean by that is this exercise tends to be far
too remedial to provide any benefits in terms of advancing your level of core strength. If you
could do a play for more than a minute and a half or two minutes, you are way beyond the ability
to do this exercise. You need to move on to something else. Not to mention the fact if you're
not being conscious about contracting your glutes, this exercise can turn into nothing more than
a hip flexor tightening reinforcement exercise because you're driving and keeping yourself off
the ground by pushing through your hip flexors and not through the appropriate muscles. We have
to put the big red X through the basic Plank.
And finally, we get to wrap up this bottom of
the barrel category when it comes to making our ab exercises with one sitting up here in the
corner, the Lying Leg Raise. Now, I like exercises that challenge the lower abs by using the weight
of your lower body to do that. However, when you limit the action to just lifting your legs up and
down, relying on the fact that this will create an isometric stress for the abs, it's not going to
cut it. What we're doing here is this causing a hip flexor over dominant exercise. Simply raising
your legs up and down, using only the hip flexors is going to lead to an arching lower back, which
can cause a low back pain or just overactive hip flexors, which can lead to low back pain. So, for
those reasons, this two gets the big red X.
And with that I finally get to break out my
blue marker, which means we're moving to the next level. Better. And I mean better and not
great. Meaning better than the last category, but still not where we ultimately want them to
be and there's reasons why. And we start with the Hanging Leg Raise. And for very much the same
reason as the Lying Leg Raise, this exercise can be challenging for some in different ways.
Number one, if you are limited in your ability to hold the bar, then this exercise could cause
fatigue in your hands before it does your abs, which would lead to less desirable results. The
second thing is, if you still have the tendency to want to just lift your legs up in space and you're
not focusing on your pelvis, then this exercise would not be very desirable, and some tend to do
that. If you want to make this exercise better, it could jump to a better category if you do
it properly, and that would be by moving the pelvis and curling it underneath. I've used a
tip before. Show your ass to the person standing in front of you if they can see that then your
pelvis is curling. But for now, I have to break out my blue marker here and give it a circle
as one that's better, but not yet best.
And giving the Hanging Leg Raise some company
in the better category is the Ab Wheel Roll Out. And this exercise is one that I actually like a
lot, but it tends to be another one of those that people don't perform properly. And when you don't,
it goes from being a good option to a not so good option, which makes it fall in this category
for now. When done correctly, this is a great anti-extension course stabilization move. Right?
One of the key functions of the abs. And the further you roll out, the more work your abs are
going to have to do to prevent you from dropping in like this. The other thing people do is they
just tend to roll themselves all the way back and take all the stress off of the abs. And that's
actually making the exercise less effective too. You want to pretend there's a line right behind
your butt from the starting position that you never want to cross in order to keep the attention
focused on the abs to do this properly. And when you do that, it is in the better category. And
for that reason, it gets the blue circle.
And so let's keep our journey going up the scale
towards best with our even better still category, slightly better than the exercises we
just showed you and for good reason why. And we start here with the Hanging Knee Raise.
And different than the Hanging Leg Raise, we get to shorten the momentum by keeping
the legs tucked closer to our body. So, A. It becomes instantly easier for those that might
be to challenge like keeping the leg straight. At the same time is going to decrease the tendency
for us to try to dominate and lift with the hip flexors because it's easier to focus on curling
the pelvis up and under. Both of the things I pointed out before. Once again, though, it has its
limitations of demanding that you have enough hand grip strength to maintain this hanging position
on the bar for the duration of the exercise. So, meaning you have to have stronger hands that abs
to ensure that your abs are what fail first. That being said, the yellow marker comes out now as an
improvement to mark the Hanging Knee Raise.
I talked about the multi dimensionality of an
ab exercise and what makes it a better choice when you're looking at one versus another and the
Hanging Corkscrew does just that. It doesn't just focus on the rectus abdominis, but it gives us
a chance to tie in the all-important obliques as well. And with just a slight twist and I mean
slight twist in the motion, literally. You're just trying to turn your legs a little bit and
you're just focusing on moving the pelvis alone. This is not a leg lift, it s a pelvis lift and
by doing this, you can see how concentrated and effective it is. But the same limitation being the
grip strength is going to be required for you to do this. But it's still a great exercise
that belongs right here smack dab in the middle of a ranking chart and therefore, the
Hanging Corkscrew gets that yellow circle.
Speaking of the obliques, another ab exercise that
has that ability to bring the obliques into it strongly is the Single Sided Slow Carry and beyond
the fact that it needs a piece of equipment. It only needs one single dumbbell to do this right.
And by holding the dumbbell in our hands here, we're working on controlling that pillar strength,
not allowing this to turn into that dreaded side bend by moving in that direction but preventing
the side bend with that heavy weight held on our side. And we can challenge this even more by
performing the exercise slowly. Each time you pick up one foot off the ground, you now have more
instability by being on only one leg at a time, which is going to demand that the opposite side
oblique contract and contract hard in conjunction with your core to provide a great stability
exercise. This here gets that yellow circle as yet another better still exercise for your abs.
And so now, with plenty of ab exercises left up on the board, we get to move up into the Almost Best
Category, not the best, but right up there as very good and solid ab exercises. And we start with the
Side Bridge Twist. And what I like about this is it's sort of the anti-side bend, right? This is a
better way to perform that lateral flexion, we get to do it from the bottom up. So, I do as I lift
my trunk up off the ground to create that lateral flexion pillar strength with the assistance of the
obliques, but also to introduce another component here that rotational control instability.
Remember, if we can layer on benefits. We have a better exercise controlling both rotation
and lateral flexion is a better exercise. It gets the green marker here, the first of the
Almost Best Category, the Side Bridge Twist.
Moving on, improving that ab exercises
don't have to be elaborate to be effective, the Levitation Crunch is one of my favorite
ways to train the abs. It's a very simple and small movement when done properly, all your goal
should be when you're trying to perform any crunch is to simply lift your shoulder blades off the
ground. All too often, people want to crunch pulling their head closer to their knees,
thinking that they're doing more of a crunch. That's not the range of motion of the abs. You
need to only lift those shoulder blades up, so stop cranking on your neck and instead think of
just levitating your body up towards the ceiling by putting your hands back behind your head and
letting the shoulder blades guide the way. For these reasons, the Levitation Crunch earns the
second spot and the Almost Best Category on the ranking of our ab exercises from worst to best.
If the Limitation Crunch is a great minimalist exercise for the upper abs the Swiper is a great
minimalist exercise for the lower abs. Because once again it relies on a very slow and easily
controlled movement to make sure you're getting this done right. All we have to do to work the
lower abs is get the pelvis off the ground. I alluded to it before. I talked about the lying leg
race. It's not about the legs it's about getting the pelvis to curl back. And the Swiper allows
us to get that feedback that we're doing it right by making sure you can swipe your hands
underneath your tailbone. This is one of my favorite easily performed type exercises that
anyone can do with no equipment at all. It belongs here in the Almost Cest Category for sure.
And as we get down here to the bottom to remember, only one can be the best. The almost best of
the almost best is the Gymnast Ab Tuck. And this one here is one of my favorite ways to work once
again, those lower abs proving once again that you don't have to worry about what's happening with
your legs, but rather with your pelvis. The focus here is unfolding your trunk right at the level
of the pelvis, creating a posterior pelvic tilt. The all-important posterior pelvic tilt that is
responsible for the flexion of the spine that creates the activation of the abdominals. And
the thing that this exercise provides us over any of the hanging ab exercises that work your
lower abs is the fact that we don't have to hang. You simply push your hands down into something
like a captain's chair or even on the countertop if you do this in the kitchen counter corner. This
here is one of my favorite ab exercises, it's the almost best of the almost best right there up
in the number two spot, the Gymnast Ab Tuck.
And that brings us to the top of the top, the best
of the best. In this group of exercises is called the Sliding Tuck. And what you should notice here
is a lot of the same similarities with the Gymnast Ab Tuck minus the requirement for equipment,
which is what places this one at the top.
Once again, we want to curl that pelvis into the
posterior pelvic tilt, not by driving with the hip flexors, but instead pulling into posterior tilt
with the abdominal muscles. And when we do this, we have the benefit of doing some extra things.
We don't have to allow ourselves to slide straight back. We could do it as somewhat of an angle to
involve the obliques as well. And if we want to really drive the lower abs into this, we can
add some additional knee tuck like a Hanging Knee Raise to make this an all-encompassing
exercise that does pretty much everything. Guys, there can only be one best and only one worthy of
the top prize, the green star when we're talking about the best of the best in ab exercises.
And so there you have it, guys worst of first, the best ab exercises, the great to the ugly.
If you want to see me do this with other ab exercises, make sure you leave a comment below. If
you want to see me do this with other exercises, just let me know below, I will make sure I
do that. If you're looking for programs that select only the best of the best so you can get
the best results, you can find them all over at Athleanx.com. If you haven't done so, make sure
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one out. All right guys see you soon.
