Probably not for one muscle or even a whole muscle group there are so many different exercises as for the abdominal muscles. The only problem is that there are effective exercises for the development of abdominal muscles, and there are not very many.
In training the abdominal muscles, most people like to complicate, in general, a simple process. It seems to them that unusual paths must lead to everything unusual. Meanwhile, it is not the path that matters, but how you overcome it. The heavier the load, the better the result.
It is very easy to build abs muscles. Simply because most often we are not talking about a large muscle group, but about one single rectus abdominis muscle, which performs a very simple function: twists the pelvis to the body or twists the body to the pelvis. Understand this. Accept this. Realize this! And then you will reject most of the exercises as useless or poorly effective.
Moreover: whether you twist the body to the pelvis (usually twisting) or vice versa - twist the pelvis to the body (raise your legs) has no fundamental difference for the mechanics of muscle contraction, because we are talking about the contraction of one single muscle (rectus abdominis muscle). Differences in accents will be insignificant (a few percent, from which it is neither cold nor hot).
However, the difference in load will vary greatly. It will be more difficult to twist the pelvis towards the body. Therefore, variations of these exercises are appropriate for the advanced level. And this is very good, because it will allow us to gradually increase the load on the press, not only by changing the number of repetitions, but also by applying harder exercises to perform. And the progression of the load is the main condition for increasing the size of the abdominal muscles!
I could now list dozens of different abdominal exercises for you. Actually, this would be what should have been done if my goal were to show off your face. However, the truth is that most exercises are either useless or duplicate. Therefore, I will only tell you about the most effective ones.
The main function of the abs: This muscle brings the upper body and lower body (pelvis) closer to each other. It's like a book open in the middle - you can close it in two ways: either by closing the left half or the right half. Likewise, the press pulls the lower part (press) to the body, or pulls the upper part to the pelvis. The main functions of the rectus abdominis muscle:
1. Twists (pulls) the upper body to the bottom (pelvis).
2. Twists the lower body (pelvis) to the upper body.
Hundreds of existing ab exercises inherently use only one of these functions. Therefore, you need to choose those exercises that will maximize the concentration of the load on one of the above-mentioned motion vectors.
