Ab Lounger Guide

The Ab Lounger phenomenon has taken off. This is the latest abdominal exercise machine to hit the highstreet and online stores, and it’s become extremely popular very quickly. In all honesty, it’s not a bad piece of kit. It works your abdominals through a complete range of motion, and hits the upper abs as hard as the lower abs.

I have my doubts though. It does seem marketed at the oxymoronic (and that’s not an insult) “lazy fitness” brigade – the stay-at-home moms who want to shed pounds “lounging” in front of the TV. Anyone with any long-term track record of fitness habits knows that that’s just not sustainable. Sorry, but if you want to get in shape, you need to develop the habits of effort and nutritional discipline. Our bodies are quite resistant to change, and a couple of light sets on the ab lounger twice a week is not going to really do anything for your physique.

However – it does have value, and it might be the best piece of abdominal exercise equipment on the market. As I said it works all six of your abdominals hard, through a full range of motion. The “jackknife” exercise is pretty gruelling if you’re pushing your sets to near-failure.

I do wonder how hard it works the abdominals at the peak of the contraction, however – I must confess I haven’t tried it, but just looking at the biomechanics, it seems like the hips are more active at the top of the movement than you’d like from an abdominal exercise. This can take the stress off the (upper) abdominals at the peak contraction. In this respect it might be a good idea to throw a couple of sets of crunches in after your jackknives to make sure you’re really hammering the abs from all angles. Regardless, I think the ab lounger has much potential, and it does get me all excited inside. If I saw one at a friends house, you’d be hard pressed to keep me from jumping on and “lounging” out a few reps.

Ab lounger exercise can be as easy or as gruelling as you wan’t to make it. The device itself won’t give you a complete abdominal workout, but it comes pretty close.

If you can manage to train your abs twice per week, with your core exercise performed on the lounger and some assistance work to “finish off” the abs – then you’ll be able to get your midsection in shape pretty quickly.

So, how do you engage in productive ab lounger exercise? Well, the device itself is intended for crunches in a “jackknife” fashion. This means that you strap yourself in, grab hold of the handles and lie fully back so that your back is slightly hyperextended. This means lying at an angle greater than a flat 180 – the purpose of this is to stretch your abs fully, so you can exercise through a complete range of motion.

You then “jackknife” up into a seated position by contracting your abs. When your abs are working, they pull your upper body towards your hips, and your legs up to your upper body. That’s one repetition.

Effective ab lounger exercise should go something like this. I’d recommend 3-4 sets of jackknifes, performed to near-failure (i.e. stop once it becomes a struggle, but stop BEFORE than gruelling Rocky Balboa 10-second-long repetition). You should try and train in the 8-12 rep range. You can often alter resistance by adjusting the settings on the ab lounger or adding weighted resistance.

After jackknives, I really recommend at least a couple of sets of standard crunches. This lets you target your abs to full contracting with the “curling up” motion of crunches – something that is absent when training on the lounger.

I’d say this is about all you need. Three sets of jackknives, and a couple of sets of crunches, performed two to three times per week. If you’re looking to train your transverse abdominus (the band-like muscle underneath your six-pack that gives you abdominal muscle tone and stops your belly sticking out) then you could throw in some stomach vacuums too.

When designing this newer generation of the Ab Lounge abdominal exercise machine, the designers made it look less like a cot and more like a chair. Along with adjustable pedals and something called a “focus strap” (I’m not exactly sure what that means), the XL model comes with an ab workout DVD. Other than that, the principle is the same as the original.

The AbLounge XL, like the original, is an abdominal exercise machine that assists the performance of a “jackknife” crunch motion by supporting the body from hyperextension to super flexion of the abdomen. The signature claim of this particular piece of equipment is that it allows you to extend (the backward motion) beyond the 180 degree flat position associated with most crunches and crunch machines.

When fully assembled and set up, the device takes up slightly more room than a regular chair. For storage purposes, it folds flat to slide into a closet or under a bed. No matter how easy it is to set up and break down, equipment that takes up too much room to leave assembled regularly is not equipment that I’m very likely to use on a regular basis.

The goal of this piece of kit is simple: to support your body in every degree of the “jackknife” crunching motion (which brings the upper and lower body together simultaneously, rather than moving one at a time). It is effective in supporting the head, neck, and shoulders: areas in which many people experience strain or tightness during regular crunches.

Is the AbLounge XL a necessary piece of home fitness equipment? I would say not. It’s does provide effective support during crunches, and if you’re the type of person who simply won’t exercise without some sort of equipment to help then maybe this or something like it is a good idea. But as always, remember that no toy, video, or highly touted system will do any good unless you use it.