Awesome Ab Secrets

Many people want to bet rid of that belly fat and produce a nice six pack or at least a flat stomach. There are many gimmicks and strategies out there to accomplish this, but what is the best thing to do?  You are about to find out.

Best Core Exercises Ever

Does it really matter where I place my hands during abdominal exercises? – Iris Berman, San Francisco, Calif.

Iris, is this a trick question? You’re asking about crunches which, as many readers know, are not my top pick for working the core muscles of the abdominals and lower back. So I will tell you where you arms and hands should be for crunches, but not without first giving you my two cents on the three best exercises for strengthening and toning your core. I’ll even tell you why I like them better.

Back in 2001, the American Council on Exercise commissioned a study where researchers from the University of California, San Diego hooked up electrodes to the waists of a dozen or so subjects and asked them to perform 13 popular core exercises, including basic crunches and moves done on several best selling infomercial gadgets. The electrodes transferred information to a special machine designed to measure the electrical activity of the core muscles as the subjects were put through their paces in order to determine which exercises lit up the most muscle fibers the most deeply and for the longest amount of time. Based on this analysis, the researchers ranked the exercises in order from most effective to least effective.

Which exercise came out on top? Not the crunch. Not even close.

The best three exercises for toning the rectus abdominis (The long flat muscle that runs the length of the front of your middle from the rib cage to the hipbone) are the bicycle crunch, captain’s chair knee lift and the ab crunch on the exercise ball.   –more