Ab machines seem to be everywhere, from your local gym to TV commercials and maybe in your home. But these machines have their limitations, and exercise experts warn that you shouldn't expect the sought-after six-pack abs from simply doing lots of repetitions in the ab cruncher or similar apparatus at your gym. While some ab machines can certainly help tone muscles and burn calories, you may find better results adding more resistance to your ab workout or looking for alternate exercises.
Add Weight for Results
To strengthen and build your abdominal muscles, you need to add weight to your ab exercises. Simply doing more crunches or situps can help a little, but just as your biceps or triceps won't get truly bigger and stronger without added weight, your abs are the same way. If you're serious about strengthening your abs, find ways to add weight to your crunches, even if it's just holding dumbbell plates to your chest while you do your crunches.
Alternatives to Ab Machines
The reason you see stability balls in health clubs and gyms is because trainers and fitness buffs alike realize that they can provide a more comprehensive workout for your abdominal muscles and core muscles than the traditional ab machines. Forcing your abs to curl forward on an unsteady surface works more muscles than a traditional situp or ab machine.
Lose the Weight
Even if you do countless repetitions of a variety of ab exercises, you still won't see six-pack abs without losing the fat that covers those muscles. And since spot fat loss is physiologically impossible, you're going to have to do some major fat-burning exercises to help bring those ab muscles to the surface and cut the fat everywhere on your body.
Home Ab Machines
If the ab machines in the gym aren't giving your stomach muscles a workout, it's likely that those machines advertised on TV that help you roll back and forth doing crunches won't help either. Many of these one-size-fits-all machines aren't worth the money. Crunches with progressively heavier loads, more than just what resistance bands can offer, will do more than expensive home ab machines, many of which are difficult to operate.
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