--- title: Traditional Crunches Are The Best For Getting Abs description: It turns out, if you want rock-hard abs, you're going to have to get them the hard way. At the request of the American Council... canonical: https://time.com/86095/the-best-sit-up-is-a-crunch/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-02T18:24:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T07:37:48.475Z article:section: Health og:title: Traditional Crunches Are The Best For Getting Abs og:description: It turns out, if you want rock-hard abs, you're going to have to get them the hard way. At the request of the American Council... og:url: https://time.com/86095/the-best-sit-up-is-a-crunch/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44886de04d3952cf/69868dce35ba6f7c75c01d32/situp.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1800 og:image:height: 1013 og:image:alt: situp og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Traditional Crunches Are The Best For Getting Abs twitter:description: It turns out, if you want rock-hard abs, you're going to have to get them the hard way. At the request of the American Council... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt44886de04d3952cf/69868dce35ba6f7c75c01d32/situp.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Best Kind of Sit-Up Is What You Think It Is > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=74441fc0-3c36-4468-95ce-79070fe113b9&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin May 2, 2014 6:24 PM UTC  Getty Images by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin May 2, 2014 6:24 PM UTC It turns out, if you want rock-hard abs, you’re going to have to get them the hard way. At the request of the American Council on Exercise (ACE) for [exclusive research](http://www.acefitness.org/prosourcearticle/3764/abs-abs-abs), study authors at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse looked at the effectiveness of popular abdominal workout equipment and exercises compared to crunches. They looked at products like the Ab Circle Pro, Perfect Sit-Up and Ab Straps, among many others. They also looked at other ab exercises like the yoga boat pose, the stability ball crunch, the decline bench curl-up, the bicycle crunch, and various planks poses. They had study subjects complete a series of the workouts, and the researchers attached electrodes to their abdominal muscles, external obliques, and the rectus femoris (which is on the thigh) and measured their contraction on each piece of equipment and exercise. They found that traditional crunches always had the greatest muscle activation. “It’s important, however, to keep in mind that there is no single abdominal exercise that challenges all the abdominal muscles in the most effective way,” Dr. Cedric X. Bryant, ACE’s Chief Science Officer said in a [statement](http://www.acefitness.org/prosourcearticle/3764/abs-abs-abs), “and the best way to work the abs is with different types of exercises. For example, the plank exercise effectively engages the transverse abdominis, which plays an important role in spinal stabilization.” A copy of the study is available, [here](https://www.acefitness.org/certifiednews/images/article/pdfs/ACE%20AbsStudy.pdf). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/86095/the-best-sit-up-is-a-crunch/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/86095/the-best-sit-up-is-a-crunch/"},"headline":"The Best Kind of Sit-Up Is What You Think It Is","datePublished":"2014-05-02T18:24:52.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T07:37:48.475Z","description":"It turns out, if you want rock-hard abs, you're going to have to get them the hard way. 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