Traditional ab exercises, like situps and crunches are hard on your back. So does that mean you shouldn't do any ab exercises? Is there anyway for you to get 6-pack abs without situps and crunches?

Yes! You should do ab exercises that take a different approach. Like the ab exercises in the bodyweight manual, that double as total body exercises - like the Mountain Climber, Spiderman Climb, and the Jackknife, and then of course some direct ab exercises like the Ab Wheel and the Side Plank.

Choose total body ab exercises. Take the mountain climber as an example. Now you'll quickly notice that this is not a traditional bodybuilding ab exercise. You don't lie on the floor and crunch or do sit-ups in order to isolate one muscle group. That's always been a downfall of the bodybuilding approach.

Instead, the Mountain Climber is another total-body, efficient and effective exercise that helps you get more total body results in less time.

Here's how to do it.

Start in the pushup position. Brace your abs. Keep your hips low and bring one knee to your chest. Feel your abs working. Slowly return the leg to the start position. Keep your abs braced and hips low. Alternate sides for as many reps as you want. Your entire body will be working hard, burning calories, and working your abs.

Other great, often-neglected total body ab exercises include the chin-up and push-up. Since I talked about push-ups yesterday, today I'll give an example of how chin-ups can give you 6-pack abs.

I once trained a woman that had never done chinups (it's really a shame that more trainers don't train women to get stronger and master bodyweight exercises).

Regardless, after her first workout of modified chins (she could only do the lowering portion of the exercise, also known in the gym as "eccentrics"), she showed up the next session marvelling at how sore her abs were simply from doing chin-ups. Years of ab work had never woken up her ab muscles like 3 sets of modified chin-ups were able to do. And during the workout, she continued to be amazed at how hard her were working during this upper body exercise.

The truth is, any good efficient and effective compound exercise will work your abs. So you don't have to lie on the floor and bang out hundreds of crunches to get a washboard stomach. Heck, that's not effective at all.

The 3 keys to abs are:
1) Fat loss through fat loss nutrition
2) Fat loss through interval training
3) Ab strength through efficient and effective exercises

Try a new ab exercise today.

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Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

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