The Single Best Way to Build Your Abs

Crunching, churning, rotating, and splitting your way to better abs might not the best path. According to research out of the University of South Florida and published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, it’s free-weight exercises that stand king and develop the kind of abs you want.

“Numerous exercises, devices, and training approaches claim to activate the core muscles,” says study author Jason Martuscello, “but in reality our research contradicts much of this marketing.”

The researchers classified 97 exercises into core exercise classification: traditional core, core stability, ball/device, free-weight, non-core free-weight. They found that free-weight exercises produced the greatest activation for the core muscles. “Ball/device exercises did not increase muscle activity when compared to other exercise types without ball or device,” says Martuscello. “Core-specific, floor-based exercises—traditional core like situps, core stability like planks—utilizing body weight do not activate the core muscles.”