Benefits Of The Ab Roller For Training Your Core

Updated: Jul 22

What is an Ab Roller?

Ab Rollers are an effective alternative to traditional core work. They are built to target the core, but also work other muscles, such as; your upper back, triceps and oblique's. Ab rollers are effective for training your core from home and being a more exciting alternative to your basic sit ups and Russian twists. An ab roller trains the core in a very unique way, although the exercise is a isotonic exercise the core is trained in an isometric way, as your abs not moving. You may have seen videos of elite athletes doing ab roller workouts and in this article I will explain how they are effective, how you should use one and what the possible limitations of ab rollers are.

What are the benefits of the ab roller?

Activating more muscles

Ab rollers use more muscles in your body, resulting in great muscle activation (1), this provides a more all round body workout, so it is great for if you want to train your core at home.

Also, ab rollers activate all of your abdominals at once. Most core exercises either train your upper abs (such as crunches) or train your lower abs (like leg raises). This means that this singular exercise can train your core better than having to do multiple different exercises and saves times. Often for people training core they do not get enough training done for their lower core and this is why you see people with the top 2 abs, ab rollers are effective for making sure you get good training for your whole core.

Longer movements

Another one of the benefits of the ab roller is that it is effective at giving your core a thorough workout as the movement is longer so the core is engaged for longer. This leads to greater results in developing the size and the strength of your abdominals.

The longer movement also helps to stretch out your body to full range of motion and then come back to the same position in a controlled manner. This helps to train in a way called 'strength through length' which basically means muscles get to train through their full range of movement. For example, as the bottom of the movement the hip flexors are fully stretched (also increasing flexibility) and then as you come up, although you are using your core, your hip flexors contract slightly to provide a workout which they will rarely get.

Choosing your level of difficulty

Now this is a big one. Due to the length of the movement you can chose how far down you go, this means that if you know you need to be doing a certain amount of reps for strength, certain amount of reps for size and a certain amount of sets for muscular endurance, you can chose the difficulty of your reps by adjusting the depth of your reps. You can also adjust your body position (which I will explain more below) so increase of decrease the difficulty.

This gives it a clear overall training advantage over traditional core exercises such as crunches because with a crunch you have to do as many as you can and you will probably be just training for muscular endurance. Whereas, the benefits of the ab roller is that you can adjust the difficulty so you can train to increase the strength or increase the size of your abs.

Which Ab Rollers do we recommended?

For Beginners

Automatic Rebound Abdominal Wheel

This Ab roller is great for beginners as it makes the movement easier, having your elbows rest on the sides means that there is more control and you can focus on your core better. Also, it has 2 wide wheels which means it is more stable and making the movement easier. These kind of automatic rebound ab rollers are effective because it makes the movement smooth, has automatic breaking to aid with control of movement and also this ab roller helps with the movement getting back up automatically.

Features we like:

Phone stand attachment
2 wheels to make movement easier
Built in break system
Automatic rebound technology

£25.99 From Amazon: https://amzn.to/3X1fPKS

For Advanced

PROIRON Ultra-Wide Ab Roller Wheel

Ab rollers without the elbow rests are effective for people who are slightly more experienced, because this adds the challenge of balance. This ab roller will also train your triceps, shoulders and upper back more due to the fact you need to keep your arms straight to roll forwards. The Proiron ab rollers are more effective for more advanced individuals because there is no automatic breaking, so you need to engage your core more to stop the movement to make your way back up.

The Proiron ab rollers are as effective as any ab roller on the market because they have a sliding track to provide the smoothest ride possible to proper engage your core without any jolting.

Features we like:

Led display to count reps
Automatic rebound technology
Enhanced stability

£32.99 From Amazon: https://amzn.to/3V19OeO

How to effectively use an Ab Roller

Perform the roll-out and then rest at the bottom and pick yourself back up to the starting position.
Perform the roll out to a step or wall which the ab wheel touches at the end of the movement, then pull yourself back up using your core muscles.
Just do Partial reps (half way or as far as you can manage).
Do partial reps and hold in a plank position at the bottom.

Hopefully, that explains how you can progress to be doing to do a full ab roll-out.

Now, lets talk about reps you can adjust the difficulty of the movement easily by adjusting the depth or holding a plank position at the bottom of the rep. So, even if you can do 20 reps you can make it hard enough so you can only do 5, and if you can do 5 you can adjust to make it easy enough so that you can do 20.

For strength and size aim between 4 and 12 reps, this will train you to get stronger and for your muscle to hypertrophy (get larger).
For muscular endurance aim 13 and above. This will train your core to be able to stay stronger for longer.

Negatives of Ab Rollers

So, ab rollers are very effective for multiple reasons. But are there any downsides?

The answer is yes and no, but really depends on what you are training and what your goals are. By this I mean, if you have just done a heavy push day and trained your chest and triceps, then this means that doing ab rollers are going to be less effective for you as your triceps are going to limit how many reps you can do and your core will not get as good of a workout. Similarly, if you are trying to get your aching muscles to recover then ab rollers are going to be less effective for your recovery, however if you have been training in the gym for a while and are quite strong for your bodyweight, then this exercise will just get blood flowing to your aching muscles and speed up recovery.