Ten comprehensive exercises that, through years of use from professional bodybuilders and personal trainers, have been shown to promote the fastest and most dramatic improvements in abdominal muscle tone. These are what the best in the business rely on to come out of their training season with flat stomachs and pronounced, well-defined abdominal muscles.

1) Leg Lifts

Proper form is important here, since you'll want to be careful to focus the effort as coming from your abdominal muscles, rather than the flexor muscles of your inner thigh. Basically, you need to find a way to hang from your upper body, either by gripping a support that's overhead, or by using your elbows to prop yourself up. Lift your legs to your chest for three regular sets.

2) Traditional Crunch

The reason why you see so many variations on this exercise is because the original version works so well. Why fix something that's not broken? The important part here is to exercise to exhaustion. Whenever you feel as though you can't do anymore, you usually have at least another ten reps inside of you.

3) Trunk Twists  

Exercises that require bending at the stomach isn't the only way to develop good six pack abs. Trunk twist exercises should be done with some light resistance, 15-20 reps per set. The idea is to build coordination between the obliques and the stomach muscles, both of which will benefit from this movement.

4) Standard pushups

Pushups are one of the mainstays of fitness in the military, and if done right, it's easy to see how the core muscles can benefit. Aside from the chest and arms, both the lower back and abdominal linkages are activated in a big way, since proper pushup form requires you to keep the body flat and straight throughout the entire movement.

5) Stretch kicks  

Any martial artist will tell you that any big motion that brings the entire leg forward and up will actuate both the thigh muscles, as well as the abdominal muscles. If you're about to go on a long jog, substituting forward stretch kicks instead of hurdle stretches can help loosen up your core while stretching out the backs of your legs.

6) Inclined sit-ups

Adding resistance to core movements will cause you to be able to perform fewer reps, but you'll get more better results in terms of size. Inclined sit-ups require the use of a bench that puts your legs at a stationary point that's higher than your upper torso, so that you're literally "fighting up-hill."

7) Static leg holds

The ab muscles respond to exercise a bit differently than other muscles groups, and in their case, good gains in size and strength can come from static holds just as well as they can repetition. While performing leg lifts, try to hold your legs out straight in front of you for about 15-20 seconds. Even though it's difficult, the strain can literally shock your stomach muscles into a good response of six pack abs.

8) Ankle Weight Aerobics

Whenever resistance is added to a natural movement of the body, it can cause muscles that wouldn't normally be used to be recruited by the nervous system. You can get soft weights that attach to the ankles for very little money, and by using them in the course of a regular aerobics exercise, your core muscles will experience a lot more fatigue.

9) The Static Plank

Think about doing pushups, but staying in the position where your arms are fully extended. The rest of your body is flat, just like a plank, and your stomach muscles are experiencing a constant straining. Over time, this can result in a lot of extra calories being burned, which means sexy six pack abs for you in the end.

10) Medicine Ball Training

It's important to mix it up with your workouts, especially when variety can lead to better benefits. Next time you're doing sit-ups, have a buddy toss a medicine ball to you on the way down, and toss it back to him on the way up. See how much harder it makes the sit-ups, after 10 or 12 reps.


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