Six Pack Abs Workout Routines

 

The internet is absolutely crammed full with people asking “what is the best workout routine for six pack abs”, or “what is the best workout routine to get ripped and defined”. The approaches to both questions are the same, one of burning calories with full body workouts, so you can either work a calorie deficit and burn fat, or eat extra calories, and build muscle mass.

 

 

 

Importance of Six Pack Abs Diet

 

First and foremost, you’re not going to get visible ripped six pack abs if you have a layer of fat covering them. So you need to eat well. You will need then to burn enough calories to reduce the fat from all over your body. If you want some great advice on what to eat, see six pack meal plans for more information.

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs – Types Of Exercise

 

Many of the workout routines I found were just a couple of exercises all concentrating on the abdominal area. Whilst these will build your abs up, if you have a layer of fat covering them, they will not get rid of that. The way to do that is to use the larger muscles in your body (glutes, chest) and ideally using full body workouts (compound exercises) which use many muscles in the body and so multiply the calories burned.

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs – Increase The Intensity

 

A further way to increase the calories burn, and difficulty is to increase the intensity. Generally that means shortening the rest period. So a typical interval training period would be 20 seconds working, 10 seconds rest, for example. With such a workout, you never get to fully recover between rest periods, so the intensity gradually steps up.

 

 

 

6 of the Greatest Six Pack Workout Routines on the Net

 

I decided to go onto the internet and find which workouts other sites were offering, and find the best of those, to save you time finding six pack abs workout routines that will really get you ripped and defined very quickly.

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #1 – Extreme Full Body Home Workout for 6 Pack Abs
Peter Carvell from Six Pack Factory show you a hard, high intensity full body workout that will really burn fat and build your six pack. This routine would be good to get rid of fat, and start to build your strength, before embarking on a harder routine for advanced bodybuilders. Peter has plenty of those sorts of workouts too!
URL: http://www.sixpackfactory.com/extreme-6-pack-abs-workout/

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #2 – Exercises and Routines for Six Pack Abs
Shapefit.com has a number of exercise routines categorised into beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. Most of the exercises are concentrating on building the abs directly, so you may need to include some compound exercises to increase the calories that are burnt doing these. The exercises are a very comprehensive set, and would be highly useful to help get you six pack abs.
URL: http://www.shapefit.com/ab-workouts.html

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #3 – 30 Days To Get Six Pack Abs Workout Routine
Joshua Kozak from hasfit.com has a five weeks of workout routine to get you six pack abs. These routines are varied, some are just for the abs, and others are compound exercises, some sitting, and some standing.
URL: http://hasfit.com/30-day-ripped-six-pack-abs-workout-routine-6-pack-abdominal-plan-schedule/

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #4 – The Spartan 300 Workout
This is a site from Arnel Ricafranca. This one has a large set of workouts to get you six pack abs in 16 weeks, which is based on his own personal challenge to get six pack abs in 16 weeks.  Arnel is a certified instructor and personal trainer. In addition also has a Spartan 300 workout – the Spartan workout is a pretty full on challenge – a once off – to test your fitness, and push your limits. Great workout, challenging, and fun to do.
URL: http://www.mensworkoutguide.com/home.html

 

And if you like the looks of what Arnel does, and want a full six pack abs program, then take a look here.

 

That’s it. With all these exercise routines you really should have no problems in getting six pack abs in no time at all, and keeping them.

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #5 – 6 Pack Abs Printable Workouts

 

This routine is from printableworkouts.com, the difference being that you can print these workouts out, and take them with you when you train.  These are exercises that center on the development of the abdominal and core muscles.  They are reasonably good exercises because they involve many compound exercises, which increases the difficulty and increases the calorie burn rate.

 

These exercises will improve your abdominal strength, without a doubt, but on their own lack lower body exercises, which you’d want because the glutes are the largest muscle in the body, so it seems a shame to miss out on including them in your workout.

 

Personally I would also include something like jumping lunches or body weight squats between each set on the worksheet to increase intensity and further increase calorie burn.   In addition if you wanted to increase intensity you could cut down on rest times, so you could cut the 90 second rest to 60 seconds for example.

 

URL: http://printableworkouts.com/great-abdominal-workout-routine-for-six-pack-abs-printable-workout/

 

 

 

Six Pack Abs Workout Routine #6 – Home Abs and Cardio Workout

 

And if you’ve been hanging out under a rock for the past few year, you won’t have heard of Mike Chang, and his crazy hard workout routines. These work quite simply because they’re full body compound exercises – these are really hard to do! The best thing with these is that they don’t take long to do at all, but you still get the full benefit of a much longer workout. They’re fun, and simple to learn, and this one is all using bodyweight – don’t let it trick you, these really are tough to do!
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAiMzZ2HeE&feature=share&list=UUH9ciCUcWavMsFcAJtLUSyw

 

If you’d like to know the sort of exercises that Mike does to get him into the shape that he is, take a look at six pack shortcuts review, or if you’re just keen to get started take a look here.

 

 

 

If you like this article, please share the information around, on facebook, with your friends, or whatever, we really want everyone to benefit from this.

 

 

 

Lower back exercises are particularly important if you suffer from back problems, to stretch, strengthen and improve your back health. We recommend if you suffer from persistent problems, that you see your GP, a chiropractor and a personal trainer to ensure your best chance of recovery.
If your back problems are due to something other than tight muscles and weakness, such as spinal subluxation, or worse still, a slipped disk, that you seek medical assistance immediately and do not attempt any exercise until you are fully aware of your situation.

This article recommends a number of simple exercises that are intended to bring some strength into your back, and to make your back a little stronger. Once your back is stronger, we recommend that you continue your training, with general back exercises, and compound exercise to prevent a recurrence of the problems.

 


 

Lower Back Exercises 1: Bridge

This exercise is good for your hamstrings, glutes and lower back muscles.
Lie flat on your back with your arms by your sides, and bend your knees, so that your feet are flat on the floor. Slowly raise your hips off the floor by contracting your hamstrings and glutes, and keeping your abs tucked in. Bring your hips up so that your hips, knees and shoulders all form a straight line, and hold, before lowering back to the start position.

Lower Back Exercises 2: Hip Roll

This exercise both stretches and strengthens the lower back.
Lie flat on your back with your arms across your chest, and you knees bent. Turn your head to the left, and move both knees to the right. Do not try to force the lowering of the knees, just relax.
Slowly return to the start position, and perform the exercise in the opposite direction for both the head and the knees.

Lower Back Exercises 3: Leg Lift

This exercise will strengthen the lower back, and glutes.
Lie down, with a pillow under your hips, and your knees bent. Lift one leg off the floor slowly and hold, before returning to the start position. Swap legs and repeat the exercise.

Lower Back Exercises 4: Arm Lift

This exercise will work your back and shoulder.
Lie on the floor, on your stomach, and stretch your arms out in a ‘v’ position. Raise one arm, with the thumb pointing skyward and hold. Lower back to the start position, relax, then swap arms.

Lower Back Exercises 5: Knee to Chest

This exercise is particularly good at stretching the lower back, glutes and hamstrings, as well as strengthening the stomach and hips.
Lie on a flat surface with your legs flat on the floor. Take one knee and slowly pull it toward your chest until you feel a comfortable stretch in your back. Keep the other leg outstretched, and stay relaxed particularly your back.

Lower Back Exercises 6: Swimming

This is a slightly more advanced version of the Arm Lift.
Lie on the floor on your stomach with your arms above you and your legs straight.
Lift one arm, and the opposite leg, and hold, then release, and return to the start position. Stay relaxed, and swap arms and legs to the other sides.

Lower Back Exercises 7: Cat Stretch

This exercise really stretches out your back and gets the kinks out of your spine!
On all fours on the floor, keep your back straight. Flex the spine upwards as a cat would, whilst tucking your chin and tail bone in. Hold this position, then return to the start position. Keep relaxed while you do this.

Lower Back Exercises 8: Side Stretch

This exercise will strength the lower back, and muscles surrounding your back.
Stand up straight, with your feet apart. Put one arm up, and bend to the opposite side, with your other hand on your waist. Bend over until your feel a comfortable stretch, and hold, before returning to the start position. Swap arms, and swap side, and repeat.

 

Getting ripped six pack abs can be a difficult journey if you don’t know what you’re doing.  A lot of people go to the gym and do a general workout which doesn’t really target anything.

On the other hand, some people go along to the gym to spend hours on the treadmill, or other cardio machine, and do hundreds of crunches.  Neither of these approaches is likely to gives the solution for how to get a six pack fast.

First of all, purely from a fat burning perspective, spending hours on a treadmill is not effective.  As an example, an hour on such a machine may burn 300 calories, which isn’t much, if you consider that a big drink of orange juice could be the same.

The trouble with these sorts of cardio exercises is once you stop doing them, they pretty much stop burning calories.  It would be preferable to find an exercise that you do not need to spend hours doing, and that will continue to burn calories long after you finish doing the exercise.

Such an exercise would involve all of your body, and many of the muscles, and be an interval based activity.  Such an exercise would mean that you would perform groups of exercises back to back without a rest between, and then have a rest at the end of the ‘set’.

 


 

The rest would not be enough for you to fully recover, so 60 to 90 seconds.  What this would do is gradually increase the intensity of the exercise, and at the same time build muscle, so you would get a cardio workout, and a muscle building workout all rolled into one exercise.  Much less time would be taken to get a much more effective workout.

One set of exercises that may help you to learn how to get a six pack fast would be the following continuously without stopping until you have reached 100 (you can go as slow or as fast as you need to) –

• 10 squat thrust jump (burpees);
• 10 Mountain Climbers;
• 10 Squat Jumps;

This will involve a large number of muscles, and is crazy intense!  This will burn maybe the same amount of calories as an hour on the treadmill, but it only takes a couple of minutes!  If you were to do this exercise after you did a good full body workout, this would really be exhausting, and would continue to burn calories for quite some time after you finish.

Standard crunches are not the most effective abdominal exercises that you can do, as they generally isolate only the upper abdominals, and not the obliques, and lower abdominals.  They only work a small number of muscles, and are not a very intense exercise due to this fact.

Instead you could do something like a knee to elbow plank which would work much more of the body, or do something like a deadlift, which would work even more muscles in the body and really build muscle and burn calories.  Whichever exercise you use and yes you can do both, will really help you to understand how to build a six pack fast.

Another aspect of learning how to get six pack abs fast is that it is better to be working on compound exercises that will include the whole body, rather than specifically working the abdominals.  With compound exercises, the core will get a workout, so the abs and the back but also other bigger muscles will be exercised.  These bigger muscles will burn more calories, helping your to burn more body fat.

To know how to get a six pack fast, you need to also understand that you need some consistency to your lean muscle building workout regime.  You need to ensure that you are working out at least four times per week to really ensure that the results come to you fast.

The importance here is that you need to keep the intensity across both workouts, and throughout the week, finally allowing your body to recover whilst you rest.

Knowing how to get a six pack fast also depends upon how much body fat you have.  If you have a layer of fat covering your abdominal muscles, it really isn’t going to matter if you have a six pack or not, as nobody will be able to see it.  To understand how to get a six pack fast, in addition to these exercises, you also need to eat good quality calories, protein and fats so that your muscles can repair, and grow.

This means that you need to consume the right proportions of each food type so that your body does not store any excess as fat, or be so low that you cannot build muscle.  You need to be able to consume the amount of calories you would need to maintain your resting metabolic rate, and add about 500 to it.  You would then reduce this to force your body to use some body fat.  If you eat regularly, as your body needs the nutrients, you will also find that your metabolic rate will be faster.

You need go quality rest – this means both sleep, and rest from exercise.  This is simply so that your muscles get a chance to grow.  How much rest you need is really down to how you feel, you can do light exercise on some of your rest days, like cardio type exercises for fitness purposes.  It is really important to understand the importance of rest in knowing how to get a six pack fast.

One often overlooked aspect is the amount of water you drink – our bodies are made largely of water, and if you don’t have enough of it, then your metabolic rate will slow down, and your muscles will not be able to rebuild properly.  A rough guide to how much water you need, would be 30ml per kilogram of bodyweight – if you are doing intense exercises, then you’re also going to need to replace those fluids in addition to this.

Best Back Exercises: The muscles in the back are the second largest set of muscles in the body, as well as being a problem area for weakness, so much so that up to 80% of people have back problems at some time.

It is really important to keep your back strong from a health and fitness perspective.  The fact that the back muscle are so large means that they have the capacity to burn a lot of energy, and help you accelerate through to the lean look that you want.

Best Back Exercises 1: Barbell Deadlifts

This exercise belongs with so many muscle groups, since approximately 90% of all muscles are called to action during this exercise.  The barbell deadlift makes use of the buttock, legs, triceps, upper back, and lower back.  This is a great exercise to build overall strength, burn more calories, and get the lean look.

Start with the barbell places on the floor, in front of your shins.  Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, bench your knees and grab the bar with your elbows outside of your knees.

Stand up, and straighten the back, running the bar along the leg, and up the thigh.  Remember to keep your abs tight, and keep your back straight as you do this exercise.  The raising of the weight should be to a count of two.  Hold the weight in the fully stood up position for a count of one.

When lowering the weight, reverse the process, again in a controlled manner, to the count of two.  Slide the bar along the thighs, and down the shins, keeping the back straight and the abs tight.

It is very easy to ‘slouch’ and end up with sore back, so be careful, and ensure that you make sure not to arch the back when picking up, or putting down the weight.

Best Back Exercises 2: Pull Ups and Chin Ups

These exercises are a very difficult exercise to do, primarily because they involve a large number of muscles.  This again is really good news for building strength very quickly, as well as burning calories and getting the lean look.

Pull ups, hold the pull up bar slightly wider than shoulder width, palms facing away from you, and lift your body, until your chin is at least in line with the pull up bar.  Do the pull upward to the count of two, hold the position for a count of one.  Lower your body in a controlled manner to the count of two, until your arms are straight, but not locked out.

Chin ups, hold the bar, slightly narrow than shoulder width, palms facing toward you.  Execution is the same as for a pull up.

Note that you can add weights either to a weight belt hook, or by crossing your feet and putting a dumbbell between them.

Best Back Exercises 3: One Arm Dumbbell Rows

This exercise isolates one side of your back, but is still compound, since it involves a lot of muscles.  This means once again, that it will build your strength quickly, help you burn calories, and develop the lean defined look.

Put a dumbbell next to a bench at the top end.  Standing at the bottom end of the bench, place your knee up on the bench, and your hand on the bench for support, toward the top end of the bench.  Your upper body should be parallel to the floor.  With the other hand, grip the dumbbell with your elbow tucked in.  Raise the dumbbell up so that it is almost touching the shoulder, to the count of two.  Hold the position for a count or one, and lower back in a controlled manner until your arm is straight, and hanging down, but not locked out.

Do this exercise using both arms by work through your sets for one side, then swapping to the other arm.

You can vary this exercise by turning your hand so that your palm points toward you and your elbow sticks out to the side.  Execution is identical.

Best Back Exercises 4: Seated Rows

This exercise involves a large number of muscles, such as the abs, the back, and the arms.  This exercise is really good for increasing your strength, burning calories, and getting the lean look.

Sit at the bench, holding the double handle with your legs in front of you.  Pull the handle toward your sternum, to the count of two.  Hold the position for a count of one, then release to a count of two.  The torso should be slightly leaning backward, the abs should be tight and the back should be straight.

Do not swing the torso to cheat the weight toward you.

Best Back Exercises 5:  Wide Grip Pull downs

This exercise, because it is performed on a machine isolates the “lats” specifically, so has less potential to burn as many calories.

Grip the pull down bar on the hand holds, just beyond should width apart.  Pull the bar down, and place your knees under the brace.  It would be helpful if you have a spotter to help you pull the bar down here!

Keeping the abs tights and the back straight, lean slightly backwards, and pull the pull down bar.  Pull the bar down to your chin to the count of two.  Hold the position for a count of one, and release the bar back to the original position to the count of two.  The arms should be straight, but not locked out.

It is important that you do not cheat the bar down by swinging backwards – keep the torso upright in the same position.

This site is largely comprised of sets of composite exercises, as these will help you burn fat and build strong lean muscle.  We now examine in more detail, why that is.

Compound Exercises – Hormonal Response

The greatest anabolic hormonal response is achieved whilst performing compound exercises, compared to isolating exercises.  This use of compound exercises leads to the development of lean body mass, which burns fat.

 

Click here to learn how burn fat and build muscle for your ripped body – FAST!

 

Compound Exercises – Calorific Expenditure

As hinted at earlier in this article, compound exercises burn more calories when compared to isolating exercises.  The reason for this is because compound exercises involve a large number of muscles, each of which is getting exercises.  The exercising of a large number of muscles is going to require more energy, and therefore more calories will be required, both during the exercise and afterwards.  This multiplied energy burning factor will continue to work as your muscles repair themselves whilst you sleep.

Compound Exercises – Functional Strength

Compound exercises are very similar to natural everyday movement, where the body calls upon a number of different muscles to enact a movement, exert a force.  By training using exercises very similar in nature to your everyday activities, you will be stronger day to day, have more energy, be less prone to injury.  Compound exercises involve many muscles that are performing supporting functions (synergist muscles) and when weak, these muscles have a tendency to become injured before the main, larger muscle.

The strengthening of the synergist muscles leads to a situation where you are most likely to be using proper form, since your muscles support you properly.  The exercise for the main muscle is likely to seem easier because your smaller synergist muscles are used to the load, and can better cope with it.  This will also lead to better posture in day to day activities whilst will reduce fatigue.

Compound Exercises – Core Strength / Abdominal Growth

Compound exercises require stability, and a large proportion of the stability required during these exercises is taken from your core.  Since most compound exercises require the core to be activated, this leads to a much more stable core leading to less problems for example with back injuries.  The other benefit of making use of the core in compound exercises is that the abdominal muscles get a very good workout, and this leads to the building of six pack abs fast.  The development of the six pack abs is likely to be much quicker than standard abs exercises, and will also develop nicely formed obliques and shape up your ‘love handles’.

Compound Exercises – Time Saving

During compound exercises, because many muscles are activated, a much smaller number of exercises is required for a full body workout with compound exercises, when compared to the number required when isolating muscle.  Ultimately this can mean that a substantial amount of time can be saved for each and every workout routine.

 

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Compound Exercises – Some examples

There are many compound exercises, below we have listed a few of the most common ones.  Please see other articles on this site to find compound exercises targeting particular body areas.

• - Squats – Primarily focussed on the thighs, glutes and core.
• - Dead lifts – Primarily work of hamstrings, glutes, lower and upper back.
• - Chin ups – Primarily work the back, biceps and core.
• - Shoulder Press – Primarily work shoulders, chest, triceps and core.
• - Bent over Barbell Rows – Primarily target mid-back muscles
• - Bench Press – Primarily work chest, shoulders, triceps and core.
• - Lat Pull Downs – Slightly easier than Chin ups / Pull ups but will less muscles involved.

Compound Exercises – A Note about Isolation

In this article we are not asserting that compound exercises are ‘better’ than isolation exercises, this really depends upon what you want out of your exercise routine.  If for example instead of building muscle and losing fat, you wanted to develop massive biceps, you would indeed need to use isolating exercises, such as a concentration curl.

The concept that we are presenting on this site, is that to develop lean muscles and burn through fat in the most efficient way, we recommend that you make use of compound exercises.

The Swiss ball, also knows as a fit ball, gym ball and stability ball, is a really useful piece of exercise equipment.  By nature it is encourages compound exercises, and is why it is known as a stability ball, because many muscles are called upon to maintain stability whilst performing the exercises.

For this reason, the Swiss ball is a great piece of equipment to help you grow lead muscle, and burn fat.

Swiss Ball Exercises 1: Balancing

This Swiss ball exercise seems like too simple an exercise to have an effect, but it is effective.

Simply sit on the ball with your arms by your sides, and your feet flat on the floor.  Through virtue of the fact that you’re sat on a ball, it will have a tendency to roll in response to your body’s movements, and your body will have to compensate to keep balanced.  Try this exercise with your stomach sucked in, and keep your back straight.  If you want a little more challenge, tense your butt cheeks (nobody will know I promise!)  If this is still too difficult, lift up one left as well as sucking in your stomach and squeezing your butts cheeks.  You are likely to find it challenging for your core to keep balance.

Click here to learn how to build your core muscles, burn body fat and build lean muscle faster than ever before!

 

Swiss Ball Exercises 2: Push Up

The simplest Swiss ball exercise for push ups is to place your hands on the ball, and walk your feet outwards until you are in a push up position, of sorts.

Perform a slow push up, pausing at the bottom of the movement, before slowly pushing back to the start position.

If this is too easy, swap ends, and put your feet on the ball at hip[ distance, and perform push ups.  If this is too difficult, push your feet together on the ball, and perform the push ups.  If this is too difficult, get two balls, and do push ups with an arm on each.  The balls will have to be of a smaller size for this to work.

Swiss Ball Exercises 3: Superman Hold

Lie of top of the Swiss Ball on your stomach, and then raise your arms and legs as it you’re superman, and hold this position for as long as you can.  This is a much tougher exercise to do than it looks.  If you can hum the theme tune to superman whilst you do it, you’re too good!

Swiss Ball Exercises 4: Reversed Crunch

Lie on the floor as you normally would for crunches, but place your legs onto the Swiss ball for support.  Perform the crunches as normal – your legs will be supported lowering the risk of hip of back injury, and concentrating the effort on to lower abdomen.

Swiss Ball Exercises 5: Back Raise

Lie on the Swiss ball on your stomach with your feet firmly on the floor.

Arch your back up and reach as high as you can, hold then slowly lower back to the start position.  Repeat.

Swiss Ball Exercises 6: Hamstring Work

Lie on the floor, and place your heels onto the Swiss ball.  Dig your heels into the ball, and lift your hips so that your shoulders hips and feet are aligned.  Hold, then slowly lower back to the start position.

If this exercise is too easy, perform the exercise to the hold, then dig your hells in and pull the ball toward your butt.  Hold, then push the ball back, lower your hips, and repeat.

 

Click here to learn how to get ripped abs, strong core, lean muscle and the body you always wanted NOW!

 

Swiss Ball Exercises 7:  Swiss Ball Plank

Place your hand on the floor, slightly wider than shoulder width, and your shins on the Swiss ball.

Tighten your abs, and keep your back straight – make sure it does not sag.  Hold this position for as long as you can.

Swiss Ball Exercises 8: Swiss Ball Roll

Start in the same position as for Swiss ball exercises 7.

Slowly bend at the knees, and roll the Swiss ball toward you so that you are in a tucked up position.  Hold, and then roll back out to the start position once more.

Swiss Ball Exercises 9: Russian Twist

Lie with your back on the Swiss ball so that your shoulder blades touch the ball, and your feet flat on the floor.  Hold a medicine ball in both hands above your chest.  Twist slowly to one side, until your torso is at ninety degrees to your starting position, hold, and then slowly return to the start position.  Perform the same exercise in the opposite direction.  Repeat.

Swiss Ball Exercises 10: Inner Thigh Squeeze

Lie on the floor on your back, with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor and your arms palm down by your sides.

Place the Swiss ball between your knees, and squeeze the Swiss ball between your legs.  Hold this position for as long as you can.  Repeat.

Best Core Exercises

 

The core is made up of abdominal muscles, oblique muscles, back muscles, ‘love handles’, and muscles that are not visible externally, and are important to the stability of the whole body during exercise.  A strong core is going to make exercises much easier and more comfortable to do.

Large proportions of the exercises recommended on this site are composite exercises, and therefore will often exercise the core muscles as part of the exercise.  Examples of such exercises are bench press, squat, deadlift, shoulder press.  The best core exercises have been compiled to specifically target and strengthen this area of the body.  A by-product of performing these exercises is that you will develop killer abdominals, as well as having the capacity to more comfortably and safely lift more weight.

 

Click here to learn how to strengthen your core and build sexy ripped abs – FAST!

 

Best Core Exercises 1: Plank

The plank is performed by balancing on the forearms and toes, in a position similar to a press up position.  Keep the abs tight, and do not let your back sag as you hold the position.  This position should be held for as long as it can be, whilst maintaining good straight form.

The exercise may be varied by moving to a full press up position, this now involves a lot more muscles to keep your body from rolling, as well as keeping it straight at all times.

Best Core Exercises 2: Side Plank

The side plank set up, is the same as the basic plank, except you lift one hip toward the ceiling and have the arm on the same side lying on top of your hip, in a sideways position.  You will have one forearm touching the floor, and both feet, one on top of the other.

Execution of this exercise is the same as the standard plank exercises, holding in good form and posture without sagging.  Hold the abs tight, and maintain the same position on your side.  Do not lean forwards or backwards.

This exercise may also be varied by moving to the press up position.  Weight is resting on one hand, the other and the hip in the same position as the standard side plank.

Best Core Exercises 3: Bridge

Lying on your back with your knees bent and arms by your sides, raise your hips off of the floor, tighten your abs so that your back is straight, and hold.

This exercise can be varied by putting either your feet, or your shoulders onto a fit ball.

Best Core Exercises 4: Fit Ball Crunches

Position the fit ball on your lower back, so that you are lying on your back over the ball.  Place your arms either touching the head, or crossed and touching the shoulders.  Tighten your abs and lift your torso off of the ball.

 

Click here to learn how to build ripped abs and a strong core NOW!

 

Best Core Exercises 5: Medicine Ball Twists

Holding a medicine ball above your head, and to the left, rotation your torso and lower the ball to your right foot in a controlled manner; raise the ball back to the start position in a controlled manner by tightening your abdominals.  Perform a set, then swap sides to the other side of the body (right to left)

Best Core Exercises 6: Kettle bell Rises

This exercise is extremely challenging, but will really improve the strength of the core.

Hold a kettle bell in one hand (for this example, the left) whilst lying on the floor (assist with the right arm for safety).  Bend the left knee, and put the foot on the floor.  Start with the right arm and leg straight.  The objective is to make a number of movements to be able to stand up, and then return to the ground, whilst keeping the kettle bell perpendicular to the floor.

For example, move the weight onto the right elbow, work up to having the hand on the floor.  Work the body around, and push off the left leg to stand.  Perform these steps in reverse to return to the start position.