Like every other muscle in your body, your abdominal muscles deserve a day of rest between each intense workout. As you build strength and endurance through regular workouts, your abdominals are able to handle increasingly more difficult exercises. In fact, you should challenge them with harder exercises if you want them to continue getting stronger.
Plank Variations
The plank is a common ab exercise. You balance face-down on your forearms and the balls of your feet. Squeezing your abs to keep your body flat from head to heels in this position is harder than it looks. As you get stronger, you'll be able to hold planks longer. Once you can consistently hold a plank for a minute or more, try more difficult variations. For one of the most extreme plank variations, lift your left arm and right leg slightly off the floor. Squeeze your abs to keep your body flat and level. Hold this position for as long as possible, then repeat on the other side.
Get Unstable
Adding instability to your ab workout dramatically increases the difficulty. A 2001 study commissioned by the American Council on Exercise showed that doing crunches on a stability ball is one of the all-around most effective ab exercises. You can also perform planks on stability balls, or do core exercises like bridges and planks with your feet hanging from webbing slings, a TRX trainer or gymnastics-style rings. Almost any exercise done on a TRX trainer or gymnastics rings, including face-down pullovers and push-ups, becomes an immediate hard-core ab workout because of the instability involved.
Weight Lifting Techniques
You can apply the same techniques you use to make strength training more difficult to your ab exercises, as well. Try holding a medicine ball, dumbbell or weight plate close to your body for extra resistance during crunches. Or vary your speed, alternating between sets of fast reps -- although not so fast that you lose control -- and super-slow repetitions. Plyometric abdominal exercises, like medicine ball throws, also place extreme stress on your abs.
Hanging Windshield Wipers
Rock climbers and other extreme athletes in search of a drastic ab workout head straight to the bar -- the pull-up bar, that is. Gymnastics-inspired moves like curl-ups and windshield wipers provide an intense ab workout. To do windshield wipers, hang below the pull-up bar, arms straight at the elbow and flexed at the shoulder so your torso is parallel to the floor. Bend your hips so your legs point straight up. Squeeze your abs tight to support your torso, keeping your back flat, as you let both legs rotate down to your right. Then rotate your legs to the left. Continue alternating back and forth as if your legs were windshield wipers.
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