Ab Exercises Ranked (BEST TO WORST!)

There are many different ab exercises, but which are the best of the best and which exercises for abs should you avoid? In this video, I’m breaking down fifteen 6 pack ab exercises to come up with the ones you should focus your effort on and the ones that you are likely better off avoiding all toget

So, you see these Russian twists, well,  yeah, they’re going to have to go.

What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx. com. What you see behind me is a bunch of different ab exercises that you likely recognize because  you’re either doing them right now or you have in the past. However, after today’s video,  you’re going to get rid of a few of them. Today, I’m going to rank the ab exercises from  worst to best, and there can only be one best.

I’m going to help you to find the exercises that  going to give you the most bang for your buck and give you the results that you’re looking for. So, in beginning our ranking here, we start at the bottom. And unfortunately, the bottom here  means the ab exercises that you might want to stop doing. And the criteria for all of these exercises  in terms of grading them is to consider A. How multidimensional are they?

Are they hitting just  one single area or are they helping us to do more than just one thing because the abs are capable  of much more? Do they have scalability to them, allowing beginners all the way up to advance,  to be able to work within their ability level on that exercise? Or do they require a lot  of equipment that might make it something that is not possible for a lot of us to do? So,  that being said, I start with another criteria, and that is the exercises that people screw up  often and the first one is the Russian Twist. Now, I like the Russian Twist, but again, this  is done wrong more often than maybe any other ab exercise in the gym.

And because it’s so popular  and common, we have to put it in this category. And the reason is that people turn this into  something called a Russian Tap. They don’t do any rotation at all and we know that the abs prefer  to control and produce rotation on their own. However, if you’re just tapping your hands left  or right, all you’re doing is an isometric hold, which is not going to get the job done. If you can ensure that you were getting the right rotation by driving your elbow back behind  your body, almost as if you’re rowing your arm back and then therefore turning this exercise  into the way it should be performed, then sure, it’s going to bump up into a higher category.

But once again, many people don’t get this right, even when they know the cue, they still can’t  execute the right way. So therefore, we have to put the big red X through the Russian Twist. The next exercise in this worst category is one that suffers from the same problem unfortunately,  it’s the Bicycle Crunch. It’s supposed to be a rotational ab exercise as well. It’s supposed to  also tie in some of the obliques.

But if you just flip your elbow side to side and pistoning your  legs up and down with nothing more than your hip flexors, that I’m sorry, you’re not doing what  you should be doing for your abs. Of course, there’s another way to do this exercise as  well and I pointed it out many times before that would jump this up into a much better  category. And that would be by concentrating on the actual rotation of the shoulders and not  worrying about the elbows. But many of us still, even with that proper cue in mind, don’t get  this right. And because of how commonly performed and mis performed, it is we have to put the big  red X through the Bicycle Crunch as well.

And so, if you watch any Athlean-X ab  video before, by the way, if you have it, where the hell have you been? You likely  know how I feel about the Dumbbell Side Bend. I don’t like it and there’s a lot of reasons why  not. It belongs in the worst category because it’s an inferior ab exercise. As a matter of fact, it  does more for your obliques than it does your abs.

And even there is not effectively the best thing  you can do. And if you even put two dumbbells in your hands to perform this, you’re just turning  yourself into a human seesaw. But more so than that is what happens at the low back when people  perform this. You can create some compression on the side that you’re leaning towards and you  can create tightness in the muscle called the quadratus lumborum, which oftentimes gets  tight and leads to chronic low back pain. For all these reasons, guys, you should  probably have expected the Dumbbell Side Bend is also going to earn the big red X.

So, the exercise behind me are dwindling and we’re still not out of the worst category, which  should be a bit of a wakeup call. And I target next to one that’s right here, dead center in the  middle of the screen and it’s the Plank. And look, I understand that this exercise can be beneficial  for some, but that some is very few. And what I mean by that is this exercise tends to be far  too remedial to provide any benefits in terms of advancing your level of core strength. If you  could do a play for more than a minute and a half or two minutes, you are way beyond the ability  to do this exercise.

You need to move on to something else. Not to mention the fact if you’re  not being conscious about contracting your glutes, this exercise can turn into nothing more than  a hip flexor tightening reinforcement exercise because you’re driving and keeping yourself off  the ground by pushing through your hip flexors and not through the appropriate muscles. We have  to put the big red X through the basic Plank. And finally, we get to wrap up this bottom of  the barrel category when it comes to making our ab exercises with one sitting up here in the  corner, the Lying Leg Raise. Now, I like exercises that challenge the lower abs by using the weight  of your lower body to do that.

However, when you limit the action to just lifting your legs up and  down, relying on the fact that this will create an isometric stress for the abs, it’s not going to  cut it. What we’re doing here is this causing a hip flexor over dominant exercise. Simply raising  your legs up and down, using only the hip flexors is going to lead to an arching lower back, which  can cause a low back pain or just overactive hip flexors, which can lead to low back pain. So, for  those reasons, this two gets the big red X. And with that I finally get to break out my  blue marker, which means we’re moving to the next level.

Better. And I mean better and not  great. Meaning better than the last category, but still not where we ultimately want them to  be and there’s reasons why. And we start with the Hanging Leg Raise. And for very much the same  reason as the Lying Leg Raise, this exercise can be challenging for some in different ways.

Number one, if you are limited in your ability to hold the bar, then this exercise could cause  fatigue in your hands before it does your abs, which would lead to less desirable results. The  second thing is, if you still have the tendency to want to just lift your legs up in space and you’re  not focusing on your pelvis, then this exercise would not be very desirable, and some tend to do  that. If you want to make this exercise better, it could jump to a better category if you do  it properly, and that would be by moving the pelvis and curling it underneath. I’ve used a  tip before. Show your ass to the person standing in front of you if they can see that then your  pelvis is curling.

But for now, I have to break out my blue marker here and give it a circle  as one that’s better, but not yet best. And giving the Hanging Leg Raise some company  in the better category is the Ab Wheel Roll Out. And this exercise is one that I actually like a  lot, but it tends to be another one of those that people don’t perform properly. And when you don’t,  it goes from being a good option to a not so good option, which makes it fall in this category  for n