The 5 Best “Ab” Exercises (YOU’RE NOT DOING!)

Put your core at the core of every exercise here…

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. COM. If you really want to get your abs to show outside of obviously having good nutrition, you need to do 2 things. You need to first and foremost make sure that you train your abs frequently enough.

And secondly, you’ve got to make sure you train your abs through all of their various functions. Now, how do we do that? Well, at ATHLEANX, we train like athletes. And I say it all the time. If you want to really get your abs to pop, you’ve got to start putting your core at the core of everything that you do.

So, I thought, why don’t I put together some 5 subtle ways that you can actually put your core at the center of 5 exercises you never thought you could. To give you another example of how we do it because if you’re going to train frequently enough, guys, you can’t just rely on only your ab training sessions. You need to start putting your core central to what you do in the weight room. Even if it’s Bench Press, as you’ll see here in just a moment. So, let me take you through each of the 5 exercises and show you the slight little tweet.

That’s all it’s going to take to make sure that your core is firing on all cylinders through each one of the exercises. Alright, first up is a classic shoulder exercise, the Dumbbell Side/Lateral Raise. Now, how do we make sure that our core is much more engaged when we perform the exercise without sacrificing what we do from the shoulder benefit side of it. Well, we can narrow our base of support. We could drop one of the dumbbells.

You see, because when we perform this exercise traditionally our feet are about shoulder-width apart. And both dumbbells are moving together. But what you’ve done is create a very, very balanced situation. And without sacrificing the gains we can make on our shoulders, we can make some very simple tweeks and that is to again narrow that base of support. Put your feet either right side by side together.

Or, if you’re looking for a little bit more of a challenge, put your feet in front of each other in what we call tandem stance, right. Now, by having that, we’ve created a bit more of a balance challenge that our core is going to have to respond to in order to keep us upright and moving this dumbbell the proper way. Now, it’s not going to be that hard because your core can definitely handle this, but it’s going to be more of an impact on your core than you ever would have in that balanced situation. When you drop one of the dumbbells, now what we’ve got is this weighting to one side and our core likes to respond to that by holding us upright and steady. So, you’re going to get this contralateral action on your core to keep you facing straight ahead.

So just these 2 little tweaks without any sacrifice to what you’re doing for your shoulder can actually help us to get much more benefit in our abs. The next exercise is one I’ve already eluded to and that is the Dumbbell One Arm Bench Press. Now, how in the world could a Bench Press actually work our core? Well, it does when you do it one arm at a time. Here in an Incline Dumbbell Bench setup, I can really work my core on overtime because I’m actually using the contralateral side again to maintain my stability on the bench.

You see, as I lower one dumbbell down, and I’m not saying go light here, guys because as a matter of fact, if you go light, your core really won’t work all that much. If you go heavy here, it’s going to fight to keep your body stable and straight on that bench so that as I drop my right arm down, it’s really working hard on my left side to make sure that I don’t go with it. So, really simply, you’re able to overload on not only your core but your chest as well because what happens is if you have a one-sided weakness, an asymmetrical weakness between your right and left sides, doing the One-Arm Bench is actually exactly what you’re going to want to do to try to bring that strength up. So there’s actually 2 benefits in 1 with this tweak. Third up in our little subtle tweaks here of exercises is the Farmer’s Carry.

It’s the Asymmetrical Farmer’s Carry. I see guys do Farmer’s Carry all the time. Athletes love this exercise for good reason. It’s a great way to build your forearm and grip and hand strength. And also to actually start building up your traps and upper body as well, but you can’t always carry the same amount of weight because it goes back to the original exercise that we talked about with the Side/Lateral Raise, you’re too balanced.

You’re too symmetrical. And I know, as a strength coach and in sports world, you very rarely get an opportunity to be balanced and operating in a very balanced situation. You’re always having to deal with asymmetrical forces, and we can do that. And we can reenact that by just grabbing 2 slightly different weights. So, if we have a 60-pounder on our one hand, grab a 30 pounder, 50 percent of the weight in the left hand and now do the exercise.

Now perform the same length carry that you would. You’ve got much more of a challenge because you want to be tilting to one side. You want to make sure that you’re fighting to keep it straight the whole time. So, again, a very, very simple tweak. Easy to do.

Just grab 2 different dumbbells, and you’ve got a whole different effect going on with that Farmer’s Carry. Next, the first of 2 back exercises that I love to sort of mix up a little bit to get that core really firing. And the first one, is on a standard One-armed Dumbbell Row. Now, yes, there is some antirotation going on when you’re trying to perform this exercise to make sure that your body doesn’t twist down to the floor with the dumbbell as you lower it, but look at what’s going on. I’ve got one knee on the bench.

I’ve got one hand up on the bench. I’m in a pretty stable position there and as we probably can tell by now the theme here is stability is not your friend when you’re trying to work your abs. You want to be unstable because your abs will provide that stability for you if you give them that opportunity. So, what I do is, I like to perform my One-Armed Rows with an Olympic barbell setup. It’s a great way to engage the abs a lot more because we’re putting ourselves in an unsupported environment.

You can see right off the bat, that other hand is now free. It’s free in space. It’s not afforded the opportunity to provide you with stability. That other knee that was normally on the bench, is now no longer afforded that opportunity to provide you with stability. So, I am free-standing and having to manage all that weight, but I don’t have the support of those other guys to help me out.

But that’s the key, and that’s why it works so much better. We can get that core working, again, without sacrificing the weight that we would normally use on the exercise with the benefits that we’ll be looking for in our back in the first place. Last but not least, one of my favorite back tweaks here for getting our core to really, really work when we’re working out is with this V-Bar Pull Up. You know what the V-Bar looks like. It’s this bar that I’m showing you here.

You know, you throw it over the top of a bar, and then you come up on the right side, and then you come up on the left side, and you alternately go until you fail, and that’s a great exercise and a great way to work your back. But, there’s a better way to do it. First of all, you don’t need a bar. You need a Pull Up bar, but you don’t need the V-Bar, so less equipment. And you can get your core working that much harder.

All you have to do is grab the bar with both hands, one over, one under, ok. So, you’ve got one on this side of the bar, and one on this side of the bar. Naturally, if you just let your body rest, you’re going to see that your body will twist in one direction, ok. And it will twist towards the forward-facing hand, alright, on the front side of the bar. If you want to