Easy Exercises To Tone Your Stomach

With all the exercise tools available, such as medicine balls, resistance bands and exercise balls, people can get quite creative with their abdominal exercises. These crazy exercises usually work, but you don't have to do complicated, multiple-part core exercises just to tone the abdominal muscles of your stomach. There are simple and easy alternatives that will get you sore but won't overwhelm you. The Aerobics and Fitness Association suggests three days a week of ab exercises. You can stick to a number of reps such as 12 to 20 or just go until you're tired.

Spinal Flexion

Exercises for your stomach can be as simple as flexing your spine to bring your chest toward your hips. This movement works the rectus abdominus muscle of your stomach, which is the superficial muscle that you can actually see when toned. The deeper ab muscle, called the transverse abdominus, stabilizes your spine. Doing strengthening exercises that target this muscle won't result in muscle tone. The basic crunch exercise is a simple exercise that targets your rectus abdominus for toning, and will require some work to the other ab muscles.
All you have to do is lie on your back, bend your knees and put your feet on the floor, and then raise your head and shoulders off of the ground. You can cross your arms on your chest, put your hands behind your head or hold your arms at your sides and parallel to the floor--whichever is easier for you.

Supine Reverse Crunch

The supine reverse crunch is another way to flex your spine and work your abs, but instead of moving your chest toward your hips, you move your hips closer to your chest. You do this exercise by lying on your back and lifting your legs toward the ceiling. It may be easier to do this lying on an exercise bench so you can reach overhead and grab the bench for support, recommends the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).

Oblique Crunch

The oblique crunch builds off the floor crunch and the reverse crunch. It involves flexing your spine, but also rotating it so the abdominal muscles on your waist, the obliques, will be toned as well. You can either alternate sides when rotating, or work one at a time. You will lie on your back in the crunch position with your knees bent. You then simply need to lift your shoulders off the ground and twist to the left (or right). You will bring the opposite knee toward the forward shoulder, so if you were twisting to the left you would bring your right knee off of the floor and across your stomach toward your left shoulder. You will not need to try to touch your shoulder to your knee; the waist muscles will work just with the effort. You can either lie back down on the floor and crunch up again by twisting the other way or do the same side until you have fatigued your ab muscles.