Ab training

[McCarley]

I have to test periodically for work and it includes the ability to do 50+ situps. It's the only area I am weak in and this is completely my fault for neglecting direct ab work for too long. My question is, if I were to work the area with exercises other than situps (i.e. russian twists, cable woodchops (and reverse), planks, etc) will this strengthen my ability to do more situps or are they more like pullups where virtually the only way to get better at them is to do them?

p.s. - I may have a followup question later if I can find the article I lost and had questions about.

[karky]

If you want to get better at them, do them. Trunk flexion (situps) is different from rotation, stabilization, etc. I won't say there's no carryover from those exercises to situps, but definitely do situps since that's what you want to get better at.

[rookie]

If you want to hit homeruns yo have to take batting practice. Hand eye drills can tighten up your skills but swinging the bat at the ball is what in the end is going to help.

Do sit ups. Use auxillary exercise to help strengthen your core but then do sit ups. Add weight to your situps to make the non weighted ones easier.

[Alcoholiday]

you can do variations as well, to keep you from burning out on one exercise. Weighted, unweighted, spread eagle, situps on a roman chair. But, i would keep it all in situp form if you need to improve that.

a lot of times, 50+ pushups is more endurance than actually having anything to do with how strong your abs are (as in, supporting x amount of weight), so maybe do higher sets like sets of 20, etc.

[AF-Temp]

All that ever works for me is just doing them. A couple sets of max efforts a day doesn't take too much time and you can hammer them out during commercial breaks while you're watching tv or something like that. I never seem to build numbers if I just do supplemental exercises (even though that's all our trainers have us do).