Like every other piece of infomercial-advertised equipment designed to work your abs, the Ab Coaster highlights exceptional customer success stories and tries to pass them off as the norm, providing only a tiny disclaimer that the results depicted aren't typical. If the Ab Coaster entertains you enough to work out regularly, it might be worth the total $290 price, including shipping (as of April 2011). But consider the other facts about the type of equipment before you buy.
Design and Basic Technique
The Ab Coaster supports your upper body over a pair of rails shaped vaguely like a "C" tilted on its left side. You kneel on a platform that rides along the curved rails. You flex and extend your hips, keeping your upper body stationary as you move the platform forward and back along the rails.
Movements
In order to move any given joint, a muscle must attach on either side of it. However none of your major ab muscles, including the rectus abdominus and inner and outer obliques, cross your hip. In other words, your abs don't perform the hip-flexing movement that Ab Coaster fitness models depict; your hip flexors do. Although your abs do work constantly, they are stabilizing your lumbar spine against the motion of your hip flexors, not actually moving the Ab Coaster platform.
Obliques
The Ab Coaster does, however, appear to target your obliques when you twist your knees slightly to one side, then continue the forward-and-back coasting motion. When your hips are twisted to the side, you move by flexing at the lumbar spine instead of extending your hips.
Questionable Depiction of Benefits
The tiny disclaimer at the bottom of every Ab Coaster infomercial warns that most people will lose less weight than the success stories depicted in the infomercial. The disclaimer also reveals that the extraordinary success stories came not just from using the Ab Coaster but also following a reduced-calorie eating plan and cardiovascular workout regimen. Yet the infomercial is produced in such a way that it seems reasonable to assume the results came solely from using the Ab Coaster, and that the Ab Coaster is a weight-loss machine instead of an abdominal exercise machine.
Research
In 2001, an American Council on Exercise-sponsored study revealed that not all ab equipment produces the promised results. In fact, some commercial ab products were shown to produce significantly less muscle activity in the rectus abdominus and obliques than simple floor crunches. Although the Ab Coaster wasn't tested in this study, the results confirm that you don't actually need equipment like the Ab Coaster to get an effective stomach workout.
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