Fastest Ways to Get Abs That Are Better Than Sit-Ups Without Equipment
When doing sit-ups, you are using hip flexors, these muscles are normally used to bring your hips up. This means that the exercise isn’t fully focused on your core muscles, which are responsible for stabilizing your spine providing support for all activities we do, reducing back pain, improving posture, and more.
To this day, athletes are looking for better and more effective ways to train their core muscles. There are better ways to get abs than through sit-ups, we’ll be going through the most effective exercises to get abs that target all your core muscles.
1. Mountain climbers
How?
- Get in a push-up position. Keep everything tight, especially your abs.
- Move your knee towards your chest. This should be a fast movement but if you are new to this, start out slow.
- Move your knee back to the starting position.
- Repeat for the other knee.
Why?
Not only do mountain climbers work on your core, it also works on your shoulders, upper legs, upper arms and even cardio. It is a plyometric exercise, which is a type of exercise that uses speed and power of different movements in short intervals to build muscle power. Martial artists, sprinters and high-jumpers often use this exercise in their training regime in order to increase speed and power.
2. Spider-man Planks
How?
- Start in a plank position.
- Move one knee to your elbow.
- Move your knee back to the starting position.
- Repeat for the other knee.
Why?
The Spider-man planks work on stabilizing and balancing your body and builds flexibility in your hips and thighs. It is a calisthenics exercise, which is a type of exercise that targets large muscle groups. This variety of planks works on your core, quadriceps and glutes. It is also great for cardio and will help with burning extra calories.
3. Leg raises
How?
- Start by laying back with straight legs and hold them together. Stretch out your arms.
- Lift your legs up towards the ceiling.
- Move your legs back down without touching the floor.
- Repeat.
Once you get used to this exercise and would like to make it more challenging and effective, hold your legs for a moment without touching the floor, every time you move them back down.
Why?
Leg raises sound and look simple, but they can get very intense. The fact that it’s so simple and effective is the reason many love to include it in their training regime. It is a strength training exercise, which is a type of exercise that improves strength (obviously) and endurance. It targets your core and anterior hip flexors (= iliopsoas).
