Complete Home Ab Workout

Your abs consist of many muscles who all want some love. Let’s do a home ab workout that takes care of them all!

Crunches

The most obvious ab exercise is the crunch. It trains the straight ab muscles (the “rectus abdominis”) between your pelvis and the lower end of the ribcage.

I’m not kidding in the video when I say don’t pull on the head! Disregard that and you may reach heights of neck pain you thought impossible.

Twisted Crunches

To the left and right of the straight abs are your oblique ab muscles. They are involved in movements where the upper body bends sideways. To train them we adapt the regular crunch.

Lying Leg Raises

We finish off with an exercise that recruits a bit of the straight abs, but mostly targets the deeper ab muscles, the hip flexors. These connect your legs, pelvis and spine and stabilize what people often call the “core.” Lying leg raises are best for the job.

If keeping the legs straight is too difficult, you can bend them as far as necessary.

Also keep an eye on your lower back afterwards. The lower backs of some people don’t get along with leg raises and if you notice pain in yours, stop doing the exercise.

How Much?

Do each exercise for three sets with one minute break in-between sets. Ideal would be if you do them as the finisher of a complete program like my intermediate schedule over here.

If you’re a complete beginner, you get more out of building a solid foundation with this program and only one ab exercise. Leave the finetuning for late.

Last but not least, remember you can’t spot-reduce fat. The above exercises give you a stronger core and make your ab muscles bigger, but getting the abs to show requires something different.