In everyday activities and exercise, balance and stability matter. Core strength training improves both. Core strength training not only works the muscles in the hips, abdomen and back, it also trains them to all work and function together. It builds coordination between these muscles, and working together balances and stabilizes your body.
When you train your chest, your back, your arms, your legs, and everything else, for that matter, you use weights to properly develop the muscle targeted. But when it comes to abs, many people ditch the weights and go crazy doing countless numbers of crunches.
Start doing loaded abdominal work. You’ll feel a dramatic difference in the stimulus.
Benefits
The ab wheel can produce excellent results. It trains not only the abdominal muscles but the entire core, including the lower back, latisimus and gluteal muscles. Arm and leg muscles also come into play to create a total body workout.
Variations
More challenging exercises can be performed using the ab wheel. The rollout can be done standing on your feet rather than kneeling. Other exercises can be executed with ab wheel strapped to your feet. For example, assume a push-up position, and then push and pull your legs forward and back, rolling on the ab wheel. In this same push-up position you can raise your hips in the air, rolling the ab wheel toward you to form a pike position. Lying on your back, you also can lift your hips off of the floor and roll the ab wheel with your legs.
Level of Difficulty
While the ab wheel is a simple device, it is quite challenging on the body. At first you may not be able to roll out very far. It is a good idea to limit your ab wheel workout to 10 reps for the first few days. Your endurance will build up over time, and you will be able to roll out farther and complete more repetitions.