The 3 Best Ab Exercises - Iron and Grit Fitness

These are the three best ab exercises that I use to get a six-pack and to build a strong core.

Decline Sit-Up

The decline sit-up is my go-to ab exercise. It provides total core engagement and allows me to really focus on contracting my ab muscles.

Here’s how you do it: Find a bench you can lock your legs into. Start at a slight incline and gradually increase the angle. The steeper the decline the tougher the exercise.

The trick is to keep your spine straight throughout the exercise. It’s easy to let your posture collapse but don’t do it. Collapsing your posture like this will shift tension to your hip muscles.

To prevent this, imagine reaching tall with your torso. Picture, in your minds eye, you backbone being enlongated. Having a straight spine creates a better lever and helps target your abs.

Beginners should perform 3 sets of 10 reps. If you can do more than 10 reps, make the decline steeper.

Decline Situp Variations

There are several ways to make the decline setup more challenging (thus more effective as you get stronger.)

Reach for the Sky

Reach your arms back when you’re laying back on the bench and stretch your arms toward the ceiling as you raise up.

Keep your hands up straight overhead, like you would if you were riding a roller coaster. This puts more tension on your abdominals. If keeping your arms up is too difficult, cross your arms on your chest until you build enough strength.

Hold a Weight

For extra credit, hold a weight plate or dumbbell while performing decline sit-ups. I found this to be very effective at etching detail into your midsection.

Add a Twist

For serrated obliques, twist at the top of the motion. Interlock your fingers behind your head and touch your right elbow to your left knee cap, lower yourself down, then touch your left elbow to your right knee cap.

Leg Lifts

There’s no better exercise than Leg Lifts for getting V-shaped lower abs.

Leg lifts can be performed on the floor or a bench.

The floor is fine if you’re a beginner or if you don’t have a bench available.

Leg lifts on a bench are great because it allows for an increased range of motion. It also allows you to unlock more challenging exercise variations.

Performing leg lifts from a bench allows you to lower your legs below your torso. This gives you a nice stretch. The stretching sensation helps build mind-muscle connection (and feels amazing).

Laying on a bench forces you to suspend your legs in mid air while in the prone position, which really strengthens your abs.

How to Execute the Leg Lift

Keep your back flat on the bench (or floor). Your shoulder blades, butt, hips, upper back and middle back should be in contact with the bench throughout the entire exercise. Maintain a neutral spine throughout. Only a very small gap should be between your lower back and the bench.

Position yourself so your butt is fully on the bench but your legs are hanging off completely.

Reach back and grab the edge of the bench for balance. Now, flex your abs to slowly raise your legs up.

Squeeze your legs together so they rise evenly. This also tones your legs as an added benefit and ‘splints’ them together to protect your ligaments and muscles in your legs, abs and hip.

Keep your legs as straight as you can and lift them up until the bottoms of your feet face the ceiling. (Your body should be in an ‘L’ shape. With a 90-degree angle at your hips. Hold this position for a second or two, then slowly lower your legs back down.

Leg Lift Variations

There are a few things you can do to increase the effectiveness of leg lifts.

Hold a dumbbell between your feet

Pinch a light dumbbell between the arches of your feet. This also works your inner thigh and surrounding hip muscles.

Knee-Tucks

Instead of swinging up straight legs, pull your knees up to your chest and then kick your feet back out. Keep your shins parallel with the floor throughout the entire motion.

Hip-Thrusts

Once your legs are at the top of the leg-lift motion. Lift your hips toward the ceiling while keeping your legs completely straight toward the ceiling. Curl your abs to make then do all the work to suspend your lower body in the air.

Don’t let the ‘thrust’ part of the name fool you – you should slowly lift your hips using your ab muscles. Don’t just thrust your hips up fast and furious.

Lift your hips to push your feet toward the ceiling. The higher the lift the more challenging it becomes. This variation can be added as a secondary motion of the regular leg lift.

This motion will more fully engage your middle and upper ab muscles. You will likely need you grab the bench you’re laying on in order to anchor yourself down and allow yourself to raise your hips of the bench.

Cable Crunches and Hanging Leg Raises

And finally, it’s a tie for my third favorite (best) ab exercise: It’s neck-and-neck between cable crunch and hanging leg lifts.

I like them both for different reasons.

Cable Crunches

Cable crunches let you REALLY focus on squeezing your ab muscle hard. It also changes the direction of resistance which keeps things interesting.

These take a few sets to get used to, but once they click you’ll know it.

Hanging Leg Raises

Hanging leg lifts are tough to do correctly. But the tougher the exercise the more you should strive to do it, and to do it until it becomes easy. That’s how you get results.

Anyway, grab a bar with your hands at a comfortable width apart. Let your body hang there, then flex your abs to pull your knees to your chest. (This is much easier said that done.)

Hanging Leg Raises teach you total body control. The objective is to keep your upper body still. Try not to swing or sway. This forces you to strengthen all your muscles to keep yourself ‘frozen’ in position.

Hanging Leg Raise Variations

Straight Leg Hanging Raises

Keep your legs, well, straight and lift them as high as you can. You can also hold your legs out at a right angle for as long as possible to tighten up your abs.

There you have it those are the best ab exercises that I use to create a shredded midsection.

Ab Training Tips

Flex your abs hard until they cramp. Hold that contraction as hard as you can for several seconds each rep. Sounds unpleasant but the results more than make up for it.

Remember, it’s not the quantity of repetitions, it’s the quality. So focus, concentrate and really milk each rep for all it’s worth.

Author’s Note about Ab Training

Abs should be trained like every other muscle: eliminate momentum, Keep tension on the muscle, flex the muscle as hard as you can at the top of the motion.

There is no exercise that is 100% the best for everyone in every situation. There is only the best exercise for YOU.

Everyone is a little different in terms of body mechanics and neuro-pathways so you need to try different exercises and see what works best for your body.

Take note of how they make you feel. And notice the results you get from them (or don’t get). Try different variations of each exercise to really understand what exercises your body responds best to.