Crunches and sit-ups can provide effective workouts for building abdominal muscles, also called abs. Aerobic exercise is an integral piece of an overall fitness campaign to lose fat and build lean muscles in your core and the rest of your body. Exercise equipment aimed at tightening the abs can provide an edge to your workouts however and in many cases can increase the intensity of your ab workout significantly.
Stability Ball
The stability ball is one of the best pieces of exercise equipment you can use to build abdominal muscles. In addition to being inexpensive, portable and easy to use, the ball engages other trunk muscles just to keep you balanced. Effective exercises on a stability, or exercise ball include the trunk curl, oblique curl and forward roll.
Captain's Chair
Few home gyms are equipped with a Captain's Chair, but most gyms and fitness centers offer them. The Captain's Chair is a sturdy upright piece of equipment in which you stand and place your forearms on padded metal armrests. While holding onto handles built in to the armrests, you lift your knees to your chest. The pressure is enormous and you usually only need to perform 10 repetitions to feel the burn in your abs.
Torso Track
The Torso Track is an effective piece of equipment if you don't like doing crunches. It provides basically the same results as floor exercises performed lying your back. You kneel behind the track and place both hands on the built-in roller. Maintaining a straight back, you push and pull the handles to tighten your abs.
Resistance Pulley Machines
Again, most fitness centers provide an array of pulley resistance machines that have handles attached to cables strung over pulleys on which you can perform lateral and up and down pulls. The advantage of resistance machines is that you can slightly move your body to work various core muscles at one machine. You also easily can add weight to your workouts when the lateral pulls become too easy.
Ab Roller
The ab roller is an effective piece of equipment to ensure that you fully engage your deep core muscles when performing crunches. While it provides little benefit over straight floor crunches, the roller gives you a place to rest your arms to that you don't engage them in your crunches. The Ab Roller is designed for you to rest in the metal curved rocking piece and place your arms up on molded bars. Rocking back and forth requires you to fully engage your abs.
Rowing Machines
Rowing machines often are thought of as effective equipment for working your legs and arms. However, the action required to bend and straighten when fully engaged in the rowing machine provide a significant ab workout. You can perform aerobic conditioning workouts on a rower by leaving the setting on low and increase the resistance on the settings to build lean muscle.
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