Anyone who works out knows that abdominal exercises have progressed light-years beyond the basic sit-up. In fact, a whole new generation of ab exercises and machines have advanced abdominal workouts to new levels of sophistication, designed for maximum efficiency to provide the trim, toned midsection that everyone wants. But how do you put the exercises together into a routine for your specific physique and needs? The Complete Book of Abs shows you how.

 ¸  The first ab book for everyone--from beginners to fitness professionals

 ¸  More than one hundred ab exercises--from traditional crunches and sit-ups to such cutting-edge techniques as corkscrews and hanging knee raises--drawn from diverse sources, including gymnastics, yoga, and the martial arts

 ¸  Includes the "Fifteen Minutes a Day to Ultimate Abs" system, which will take you from an undeveloped stomach to a rippled washboard look in six months

 ¸  Dozens of favorite and new routines from America's foremost coaches, trainers, and bodybuilders

 ¸  How to be your own personal trainer and put together your own routines

 ¸  The most up-to-date information on diet and nutrition, including a personal
template to maximize diet-exercise efficiency

Already a fitness classic, The Complete Book of Abs, is the definitive guide for abdominal toning and strengthening. No one who's serious about working out should be without it.

Kurt Brungardt was at the front end of the abdominal obsession. His Abs of Steel video was a bestseller, and the original Complete Book of Abs, published in 1993, was considered the bible of midsection exercises for trainers and fitness enthusiasts. The obsession has only grown since then, manifested by dubious infomercial products, a burgeoning fitness-magazine industry promising readers great abs with almost no investment of time and effort, and (perhaps because of the shortcomings of the first two phenomena) a boom in the demand for legitimate nutritionists and personal trainers. Even Brungardt himself came out with a 1998 book, 3-Minute Abs, to take advantage of the craze.

With all that going on, it seems hard to believe that there's anything new to say about abdominal exercise. Indeed, this revised version of The Complete Book of Abs doesn't really try. There is a new prebeginner midsection routine, which leads into the more advanced exercise regimens described in the original book, and a handful of new exercises. But other than that, the expanded sections are in nutrition (several new pages of recipes) and total-body fitness (new photos demonstrating exercises for body parts other than abs).

Still, the original package is a terrific deal: more than 100 exercises, numerous training routines, and lots of basic information about exercise and diet. Each abdominal exercise is rated for difficulty on a scale of 1 to 3 and how risky it is to the lower back. The routines are complete and thoughtfully compiled, and there's not a bit of advice in the entire book that isn't scientifically legitimate. That's why this book--in either edition--remains indispensable for those serious enough about fitness to need information that goes beyond the basics. --Lou Schuler END

Highly Recommend!!!! (5.0)

i highly recommend this book. i am 26 years old. i played a varsity ncaa sport and have been in great, athletic shape my whole life... until fall of 2008, when i was in a car accident and tore a ligament in my lower back. i went through weekly medical treatment, physical therapy, and post-physical therapy training until early 2010. needless to say, i was no longer in shape. i had poor balance and gained a lot of weight. i have since lost 36 pounds and have been able to start easing back into sports.

this book is not limited to giving a long list of available exercises. it provides excellent strategies for making life-long changes in all dimensions of your life including diet. it provides an excellent 24 week workout schedule (plus an additional 6 weeks before entering this schedule if you have never done any exercise before in your life). this might seem like an exceptionally long workout schedule, but this book is not geared towards the get ripped quick schemes you hear about. the goal and purpose of this book is to encourage life changes that will allow you to maintain and improve on your results for the rest of your life. if you simply diet, then when the diet is over, you will gain back what you lost; thereby losing your gains.

my appreciation of this book comes from its commitment to help you get healthy and stay healthy. if you want an 8 pack by the end of the month, look elsewhere. if you want to get ripped in a healthy, steady fashion and stay that way for the rest of your life, get this book.

also, this books section on dieting is good. but, i would recommend getting another source for information on this aspect of your life and use this section of the book as a supplement to that other source. i strongly recommend Insanity by Beachbody. i do the workouts recommended by the book reviewed here, and on the days off, i do the Insanity workouts (for cardio). the Insanity workouts are supposed to be daily, but i just do them every other day or so. but, the main reason why i recommend the Insanity package here is because it has a much more thorough guide to nutrition. the book and Insanity together give you everything you need to know about nutrition, including simple formulas to calculate exactly how many calories you should intake daily and a very large variety of healthy AND DELICIOUS meals.

love life, and let it love you back. get healthy.

Great book! (5.0)

I must admit, I was skeptical of buying a book with excercises. I own a series of DVD workouts including P90x, insanity, and the pit. I love all of these DVDs but the problem is the ab workout is always the same. But this book really has multiple ab workout routines that I implement in my workouts that these DVDs dont have. I 100% recomend this book to anyone who wants to get a good ab routine going. It even has a routine for pregnant women!

Very informative (4.0)

I purchased this book because it got good reviews from other readers. The book is full of information and I'm happy with the purchase.
If you want to understand more about your abs this book is a good book to get. It is full of different routines for the abs so you can pick
and choose or create your own.

Some outdated material but kind of useful (3.0)

Key points:
-In this book there is still the belief that muscles, specially in the abdominal area, can be isolated with specific exercises;
-It dedicates a whole chapter on using "the machines", which most fitness experts educated in the last ten years will disagree with;
-Has "power nutrition recipes" along with the general nutritional and fitness advice;
-It dedicates a chapter on how to take care of your lower back;
-Because the rest of the body is also important, it dedicates seven pages to back, chest, arms, legs and shoulders;
-It has more than a hundred pages of ilustrated ab exercises, most of which you can do at home and even at the office.

Recommendation: If you're already fit and just need to push your abs a little bit further, buy it. If not, then buy a newer book on TOTAL BODY WORKOUTS (like those edited by Men's or Women's Health), abs are just a part of your body, and if you don't eat well and do regularly both aerobic exercises and weight-lifting (and I don't mean pressing 300 lbs.) you will never see your toes no matter how many abs you do.

P.D.: It is in deed a fitness classic, a pretty good book in its time.

This program works great (5.0)

I had this book once before but it came up missing. It really works if you follow the program. This book makes getting rock hard abs easy.