A lot of ab exercises put more emphasis on the middle and upper abs, meaning that the lower abs don’t always get worked. Exercises which involve lifting the legs and/or bringing them towards the body are better for working the lower abs. This post has 4 lower ab exercises for beginners to help you start to build strength in this area.
Exercise instructions
Please read these safety guidelines before you start, as well as the instructions below.
You’ll need an exercise mat or something else to cushion your spine – a folded blanket for example.
Double leg stretch
Start position: lying on your back with your knees and hips bent at right angles and your hands behind your head
- Curl your head and shoulders off the floor as you straighten your legs
- Return to the start position and repeat x 10
Scissors
Start position: lying on the floor with your arms by your sides and your legs vertical
- Engage your abs strongly to keep your pelvis stable and lower one leg to the floor.
- Return this leg to the vertical and repeat with the other leg
- Repeat for 5 on each leg
Reverse crunch
Start position: lying on the floor with your arms by your sides and your legs vertical
- Engage your lower abs as you curl your lower spine off the mat. Again, it should be a smooth curling movement
- When your lower back has left the floor, start to reverse the movement – curl your spine back down under control
- Repeat x 10
Straight leg crunch
Start position: Lying on floor with legs vertical
- Curl your head and shoulders off the floor as you reach your hands towards your feet
- Repeat x 10
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Related to lower ab exercises for beginners
Ab workouts FAQ
The stock answer to this is that you can’t get rid of fat from a specific area. This is repeated frequently and emphatically by almost everyone involved in fitness. Given that it’s the go-to answer, you would think that there’s a pile of evidence to support it. In fact, the evidence is surprisingly weak. On the other hand, there’s no evidence that you can exercise to burn fat from a specific area either.
What we do know for sure is that our bodies have preferred places to store fat – and the abdominal area is one of them. So you’re not likely to have a fat-free belly until you’re a healthy weight. The best way to be a healthy weight is of course to have a healthy diet and to exercise regularly. Any exercise helps with weight control.
Even if it doesn’t burn belly fat, regular ab exercise will make a difference though. The deep core muscles pull the abdominal area flat and having a strong core can make a real difference. In fact it’s often the case that what people think is fat is just poor muscle tone allowing the abdomen to protrude.
So, the best things you can do to look slimmer around your middle are to make sure you’re a healthy weight and do some core training.
Plank holds have been an enormously popular abs exercise for years now. This is probably due to the buzz surrounding the exercise in the form of challenges and extreme hold times, rather than being due to its merits as an effective exercise.
Done correctly, the plank will engage the deepest abdominal muscle, the transverse abdominis (TA). This is the one that plays the biggest part in pulling the abdominal area in flat, as well as playing an important role in pelvic and spinal stability. It’s a challenging exercise and most people will struggle to hold the correct position for more than a minute. These are the good points. However, the plank has its drawbacks:
- Doing it with correct technique is difficult for those who are not used to core training. To be effective, the back and legs must form a straight line (like a plank). Inexperienced exercisers fail to do this.
- It’s a static exercise (ie the muscles are held contracted). There are two problems with static exercises. One is that the muscles are only worked in one position and the other is that it causes blood pressure to increase.
- It’s not functional – we do nothing vaguely resembling the plank in every day life. If we want to train our TA to engage when we’re active, then holding it in a static contraction isn’t the best way.
So should you do plank holds? Yes, it’s good to add them to your abs routine sometimes or to do a plank challenge for variety. But you should make sure your technique is correct and you shouldn’t waste your workout time trying to build up excessively long holds.
As with most “best exercise” questions, the answer depends on what you’re trying to achieve. The two main goals people have are flat abs and 6 pack abs. To have a flat abdominal area you need to train the deeper abdominal muscles. This is done by doing core stabilising exercises. The 6 pack muscles are the top layer of ab muscles and are trained by crunches and similar exercises – any exercise in which the upper body and lower body come closer together against a resistance. If you want to train all your ab muscles, bicycle crunches are a good all-round exercise.
