This question comes in a lot for our in home personal training team: Does the ab roller give people better abdominal muscles?
Technically, if you use the ab roller properly and often enough for your fitness levels, then YES, it will improve the abilities of your abdominal muscles. But, what is your ultimate goal in using the ab roller? Is it really to improve those muscles or to burn the fat surrounding them? Nine times out of ten, people are using the ab roller for the purpose of weight loss, and this is not a good use of your limited, precious exercise time.
If you're strictly looking to increase endurance and strength in your abdominal wall, then go ahead and use the ab roller. If your concern is more about the "laundry" that lies above your "washboard abds" then you need to better identify your goal: You're not after "better abdominal muscles". Nope. You're after "fat loss". And, unfortunately, fat loss won't come from using the ab roller.... Not much anyway.
For fat loss, you need moving exercise of your bigger muscles at moderate to high intensity (this is not suitable for those of serious medical conditions or uncontrolled COPD). And, you need to get a handle on your total calories coming in vs going out in the average week. After all, if you burn 1000 calories in a workout but then consume an extra 1000 calories later, then you're not going to achieve much weight loss from that session. (By the way, some sugary alcoholic beverages contain 1000 calories in just one drink!)
You can train the core abdomen muscles all you'd like (and believe me, it's very good for you to do so), but when it comes to burning bodyfat, there is a world of difference in training and lifestyle methods.
Perfect Personal Training is America's choice for in home personal training and exercise science. Our personal trainers and wellness coaches are top certified, degreed, highly knowledgeable, and extremely experienced. For a free in home consultation with a top certified Perfect Personal Trainer, please visit us online at http://perfectpersonaltraining.com/ or call 877-698-3648. Our top certified personal trainers are always eager to help!
