Abdominal Ab Exercises

You need more than that trusty crunch to sculpt awesome abs. Sure, the crunch is an effective exercise, but it just doesn't hit all the many muscles in your abdominal region. It's as if your abs were an iceberg and crunches hit only the top--the part you see rising out of the water. To get at the 90% of submerged ice you need to literally "go deep." Here, exercise physiologist Michele Olson explains her deep-layer abdominal conditioning method, then gives you the program that will flatten that pooch for good!

The deepest abdominal layers are the internal obliques and the transverse abdominis. They're not activated in the same way as the other abdominal muscles; in fact they are often "stupid" in our bodies. These deep muscles require a unique means of activation--on the level of calculus. If we commonly use exercises equivalent to algebra to work our abs, the deep layers remain just about as developed as our poor calculus skills.

One of the most important roles of these oft-neglected ab muscles is to resist movements--movements that are adverse to the torso and back. In other words, these deep-layer abdominals are designed to minimize motion of the torso and back and correct positions that threaten sound alignment. This muscular phenomenon is known as stabilization. When working optimally, these muscles not only stabilize the torso and back, they provide the body with true power.

The Syco XT is not just an Ab exerciser it is a complete core training system.