The Best Gym Exercise Equipment for Abs

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Gyms may equate, in most peoples' minds, with rippling pecs and bellows of effort as huge, sweaty men pound out dozens of pull-ups. But no amount of ripped lats and pecs will help you as much with basic everyday movements as having core stability. The best gym equipment for training your abs has been sitting right under your nose all along, right next to the bench press.

• Roman Chair/Ab Slings

Some trainers would be tempted to call the Roman chair and ab slings -- two different types of equipment that facilitate the same motion -- a hip flexor exercise, since you usually bring your knees or even your legs up to waist level as you hang in the chair. Lowering your knees or legs in the Roman chair version of this exercise, however, forces your lower abdominal muscles to work very hard to keep your back from arching. If using the ab slings (which attach to a pull-up bar or the upper bar in a squat rack), your lower abs must also work extra hard to keep your body from swinging on the downward motion of knee-ups or leg raises.

• Fitness Ball

These now-ubiquitous pieces of gym equipment go by a number of names, including gymnastic balls, stability balls, balance balls, Swiss balls, Pilates balls and so on. Regardless of the name, the basic concept remains the same: an inflated sphere of tough rubber that will roll in any and all directions, given half a chance. Balancing your body on this piece of equipment -- not to mention lifting weights on it -- challenges your abs and all your other core muscles, too, to keep your body steady.

For a gentle introduction to the fitness ball, try transitioning any sitting weight lifting exercises you've been doing -- like overhead triceps extensions or biceps curls -- from a weight bench on to the ball. Once you can do these exercises with good form while seated on the ball, lift one leg and keep it in the air as you do the exercises. Having only one leg to balance with will challenge your core even more. You can also do supine exercises, like a dumbbell chest press, with your back supported on the fitness ball as if it were a weight bench.

• Bosu Ball

The Bosu ball, also known as a Bosu trainer, isn't actually a full ball at all. Instead, it's a flexible plastic dome with a solid, hard plastic base. You can use the Bosu ball as a balance pad, oriented with the rounded, flexible plastic surface upward and the hard plastic base down, or as a wobble board, with the flexible dome pointing down so that the hard plastic surface wobbles unpredictably.

You can adapt any standing weight training exercises, such as shoulder presses, hammer curls and squats, to use on the Bosu trainer, much as you adapted the sitting exercises to use on the fitness ball. Doing so forces your core muscles to stabilize your body against the inherent instability in the Bosu ball.

• Mats

There's no substitute for getting down on the floor to do some ab work. Use the mats your gym provides to help pad your spine, shoulders, head and hips as you do crunches, alternating crunches, spine hollowing or a host of other familiar ab exercises that use your own body weight for resistance rather than ab exercise equipment. Sometimes the simplest tools really are the best.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/111932-gym-equipment-abs/ - Exercise Equipment for Abs