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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
- 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.
