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FACT CHECKEDHaving highly defined and toned abs is great, but having a strong core is even better. Thankfully, if you do core specific exercises, aesthetics and strength come as a package. One area of the core that you need to focus on for strength and building an impressive "six pack" is the upper abs.
This is what we are focusing on here. We’re going to hone in on the best upper ab exercises, also covering how the upper abs function, how to target them, and the best upper ab workouts to start doing today!
Table of Contents:
As we go through the exercises, we will make note of progression (harder) and regression (easier) movement options where applicable, in addition to how your upper ab muscles are worked and other key information.
The 9 best upper ab exercises to include in your core workouts are:
According to most serious lifters, the barbell rollout is the ultimate ab exercise, and it's one of my favorite barbell exercises, period. If you want stronger, more defined abs, you’ll want to include this exercise into your routine.
To be quite frank, it's not just an "upper ab" exercise, it's an all around core exercise. But, because it is so effective for the upper abs, it deserves to be at the top of this list.
The barbell works many muscles, but in regards to the abs, which are the main focus of the exercise, it works them in two ways :
That's a double whammy of rectus abdominis activation!
Note: This is an advanced exercise as you must engage the ab muscles to prevent the pelvis from going into anterior tilt and hyperextending the lumbar spine.
Here’s how to perform the barbell rollout:
Best Rep Range: 6-12 reps
Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Progression: To make the exercise more difficult, you can do it from a standing position rather than a kneeling position. You can also use a band for additional resistance.
Regression: Some beginner alternatives include arm walkouts, arm slideouts, plank saws, and pikes.
The stability ball crunch is really great for honing in on the upper abs and even made the top 3 best ab exercises in a study conducted by ACE1. It may look easy, but the activation is serious. You are going to feel some SERIOUS contraction in the upper abs.
The great thing about the stability ball is it allows for a greater range of motion (both contraction and stretching). Plus, it enhances balance and stability, improving your overall physical function by recruiting more muscle fibers and increasing muscle activation in the rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, and the obliques by 24% to 38%.
When performing this move, make sure that your abs remain tight throughout this abdominal exercise, and choose a focal point on the ceiling to maintain proper form.
Here’s how to perform the stability ball crunch:
Best Rep Range: Failure
Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Progression: Hold a weighted plate or dumbbell at your chest.
The cable crunch is based on trunk flexion, as you are bringing your upper body toward your legs. As such, it is an upper ab dominant exercise.
As a beginner, you’ll use lighter weight, and as you become stronger, you can adjust the weight level while maintaining proper form. This is great as it allows for easy progression. You can really control the difficulty of this exercise easily.
A few tips to keep in mind: Keep your back straight to avoid rounding your back, and your hips and arms still throughout the exercise. Be sure to engage your glutes and hamstrings. This will prevent you from sitting on your heels or relaxing your lower body.
Here’s how to perform the cable crunch:
Best Rep Range: 8-15 reps
Difficulty: Can be adjusted to suit different levels of fitness. However, good posture throughout this exercise is essential. If you’re having trouble maintaining proper form, you can begin with the bodyweight version of the cable crunch until you get stronger.
For more great cable core exercises, check out the 17 Best Cable Machine Ab & Oblique Exercises.
This is essentially a reverse crunch, so it's going to work your upper abs very well too. Each time you lift your hips off the ground with your legs straight in the air, your upper abs are going to be powering the movement.
A few key tips: Don’t allow leg motion to control the motion when coming back down. Your abdominals need to be in control when lowering down to prevent lower back strain. Also, engage your abs by drawing the pelvis into your rib cage, and do not lift your neck or head.
Here’s how to perform the hip lift:
Best Rep Range: 10-20 reps
Difficulty: Easy
Hollow holds are an isometric compound bodyweight exercise. There might not be movement, but it requires a lot of muscle activation, especially from the rectus abdominis.
The exercise uses all of the abdominal muscles and your low back to hold the position. However, it specifically targets the upper abs muscles by creating tension when contracting inward and creating intra-abdominal pressure, or IAP. It also works the lower abs well because you need to hold your legs up in position.
A few key tips:
Here’s how to perform the hallow hold:
Best Rep Range: Failure (or 30-60 seconds) Really squeeze as you hold to increase difficulty and effectiveness.
Difficulty: Easy. The longer you hold the position, the more difficult this exercise will become, and the stronger you will become. Once you are able to hold this for one minute, you’ll progress into a hallow rock.
Progression: You can hold a light weight and something between your feet to increase the difficulty.
A variation of the crunch will always have a spot in our upper ab workout, as research shows that curl up activities do a better job of activating the upper abs, compared to posterior pelvic tilt exercises2.
This bodyweight exercise primarily targets the abs, and specifically, the upper abs. This is a great exercise if you’re looking to improve abdominal strength and build muscles in your midsection.
Different tuck crunch variations might be easier to perform, such as the chair ab tuck, stability ball tuck, or simply keeping your feet planted on the floor instead of lifted off the ground. However, lifting the feet off the ground will allow for better targeting of the upper abs.
For best form, keep your movements controlled and slow. Be sure that your neck and shoulders are relaxed throughout the movements. And, if you have back or shoulder issues, you may want to choose an alternative or discuss this exercise with your doctor.
Here’s how to perform the tuck crunch:
Best Rep Range: 10-20 reps
Difficulty: Easy
Most people do the crunch incorrectly, and it affects the neck and the back.
Here are some of the wrong things to do when performing a crunch,
Here are some of the right things to do when performing a crunch,
While this exercise will have your abs burning, you’ll also feel it in your shoulders, chest, back, and legs. It's a total body bodyweight exercise.
If you want a strong core (and abs) this is the one. It's basically the bodyweight version of the barbell rollout as it works the core in the same manner. So, if you can't do ab rollouts or you just want to switch it up, do the front plank walkout. And, if you're interested in more great variations of the plank, make sure to check out our article: 29 Best Plank Variations.
A few tips to help you with the front plank walkout are:
Here’s how to perform the front plank walkout crunch:
Best Rep Range: Failure (30-60 seconds)
Difficulty: Medium. Consider starting with a plank, and once you're able to hold a plank for a minute, you can progress into this exercise.
Here are some of the wrong things to do when performing a plank,
Here are some of the right things to do when performing a plank,
Weighted decline situps are one of the most effective core exercises to improve your core strength and stabilize the body to prevent injury. The weights give you control over your progressions, allowing you to obtain your fitness goals.
Of course, as a beginner, you should start without any weight at all. You can cross your arms or hold them behind your head or straight out.
Because you are adding the extra resistance to the traditional sit up and placed in a declined position, you’re increasing the intensity of the workout for your rectus abdominus (as well as your transverse abdominis and obliques), especially the upper abs due to the movement being based on flexing your torso toward your legs.
When performing this exercise, be sure to maintain proper form throughout every movement. If you are unable to do this, then you’ll need to reduce the amount of weight.
Here’s how to perform the weighted decline sit up:
Best Rep Range: 8-15 reps
Difficulty: Hard
Regression: No weight
This intense exercise does not only engage your entire core, it also recruits your hamstrings and your calves by keeping your legs extended in the air during the whole exercise.
In terms of the rectus abdominis, while it is an upper ab focused exercise due to the movement being trunk flexion, it is also great for your lower abs as they will be activated in an isometric manner to keep your legs up.
All in all, there's no doubt that v-up exercises will get your breath going as it builds a strong core, improving stamina and coordination. Stability and control are essential to the exercise.
To help you perform it correctly, aim for stability first, and progress through this exercise by holding at the top for longer.
Here’s how to perform Half V-Ups:
Best Rep Range: 10-20 reps
Difficulty: Medium (Increase difficulty by increasing range of motion: bring your feet down as you bring your arms down each rep, slowly!)
How many sets you can do per week will depend on your fitness level. You can do a wide range of weekly sets of upper ab exercises, ranging from 2 to 10 sets but up to 20 sets per week. Choosing the best number of sets for your fitness level will require your best judgment coupled with progression.
You can train your abs every day as long as you are training different core muscles, and this will train your muscles evenly and avoid overtraining any single muscle group.
If your core is sore, take a rest. Overtraining is never a good idea. Like other muscles, your abs need to recover. And if eventually you are finding that your abs are not getting sore ever, then you need to take progression up a notch (do more reps or add an external load or do harder variations). If your core workouts are getting easier, you are not progressive overloading.
Because the abdominals are made up of both slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers, it’s important to use a combination of low weight and high reps and heavy weight and low reps. Moreover, you need to give them time to rest and recover after training (you can't train your abs every day! at least not if you are training them properly).
If you want to maximize your results, here are a few things that you can do,
A good, well-rounded ab workout will consist of lower and upper ab hypertrophy exercises as well as lower and upper ab strength exercises. This means spreading out sets that will target the different functions of the abs that we’ve previously discussed in this article.
To achieve this, you will do ab-specific workouts throughout your week. For example, one day, you’ll do an upper ab workout the next session, you’ll focus on the obliques or do erector spinae exercises. The goal is to focus on the entire abs over different sessions or do a couple of sets for each in one workout, 2-3 times a week.
You can add an upper abs workout (and core exercises, in general) to the end of your normal workout routines throughout the week.
Perform each exercise for 20 reps in the order listed, and then continue to the next exercise. Repeat this sequence as many times as possible, following a 10-minute AMRAP time frame.
You could also try our Ab CirCuit Workout if you wanted another challenge to work your entire core.
Keep in mind there are no upper and lower abs, technically. The rectus abdominis (which are your "abs") is not divided into top and bottom halves, just left and right sides. Nevertheless, when discussing core workouts, there are exercises that better target the top portion of the rectus abdominis, or in other words, your "upper abs".
We can't say how many packs are the upper part and how many are the lower, as not everyone has the same number of abs. In fact, you could have 4-pack abs vs. 6 pack vs. 8 pack, with abdominals ranging from 2-10 individual abs that make up your rectus abdominis.
Of course, 6 is the most common, which is why everyone calls their abs a "sick pack". If you're interested in this topic, make sure you check out our article on Abs (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) Explained as we dig into it in even more detail!
For the sake of keeping things simple, when referring to upper abs, it is the top portion of the rectus abdominis from about the belly button up. Now, while the rectus abdominis is not split into bottom and top halves, anatomically speaking, it is good to differentiate the top and bottom part of your abs in workouts as certain exercises will better target the upper abs and certain exercises better target the lower abs.
Basically, the type of movements you perform (spinal flexion and hip flexion) will increase activation in one over the other, BUT both the upper and lower parts of your abs will be activated no matter what. It's just the degree of activation that makes some exercises better for the upper abs and some better for the lower abs.
Your core muscles and six-pack abs aren’t just meant to look good, they have some major responsibilities in movement, support, and stability of your spine.
There are six main muscles in the core, and each muscle serves a primary function in how the body moves:
If you’re not including ab workouts into your routine, it’s affecting your overall strength, endurance, and performance. People say big compound movements are enough for core strength, but the truth is, it's really not. If you aren't doing core specific exercises, you will have a weak link that is your core.
Your abdominal muscles are also an anchor for your back. Weak abdominal muscles place unnecessary strain on your back. Not only does this increase your risk of injury, but it also prevents you from achieving many fitness goals.
Besides having less strength and resilience if you don't train them, your abs are crucial for:
Let's answer some frequently asked questions on upper ab exercises.
Yes, when you properly perform a plank, it engages your abs, including your upper abs, and helps to develop a strong core.
Your abs are broken up into different muscles, and because of this, you are able to work out different ab muscles every day while giving the others a break. You should not target the same muscles consecutively.
Toning your upper stomach requires doing ab-specific workouts that target your top abs while also reducing the fat layer covering your abs.
Your diet is the critical component to getting rid of upper belly fat. No amount of cardio or exercises by itself is going to be enough to burn fat.
You cannot strictly isolate the upper abs but you can target them more. Whenever you work the upper abs, you’ll be working the lower abs to a certain degree. The same holds true when you’re working the lower abs. However, with certain core exercises, there is a higher activation in either the upper or lower part of the rectus abdominis, allowing you to, in essence, isolate the upper abs or lower abs.
Your abs act on spinal flexion and hip flexion (as well as anti-extension). So, when discussing exercises for the rectus abdominis specifically, it will be one of these actions.
Your upper abs will be the most activated during movements that bring your upper body toward your hips/legs (spinal flexion). Your lower abs will be most activated during movements that bring your legs/hip toward your upper body (hip flexion).
The following exercises will target your upper abs:
The following ab exercises will target your lower abs:
Of course, there are exercises that combine both hip and spinal flexion so you can work both the upper and lower portions of your rectus abdominis - for example, V-Ups.
Moreover, with exercises like the plank, you are working your entire rectus abdominis to a high degree (as well as many other muscles) as you must resist both spinal and hip movement. The plank is an anti-extension movement, which, again, is one of the rectus abdominis jobs.
The best upper ab exercises are based on spinal flexion and anti-extension and include the barbell rollout, stability ball crunch, cable crunch, hip lift, hallow body hold, tuck crunch, front plank walkout, weighted decline sit up, and half V-up.
The secret to having well-defined abs is actually no secret at all...your diet is the key to revealing the hidden muscles. If you do not have a low enough body fat percentage, your abs muscles cannot be seen - no matter how strong or defined they are.
While various factors play a part in this, such as body types and fitness goals, a male will need to have around 13–16% body fat to see their abs, and a female will need around 22–25% body fat. For more defined abs, you will need to have an even lower percentage of body fat.
You can have strong, tight abs, but if you have even the smallest amount of body fat covering, nobody will know.
However, with that being said, it’s likely that you can see the definition in the upper abdominals way before your lower abs. This is because lower belly fat is one of the most stubborn fats to lose and the most common area for fat to accumulate. Most people who workout regularly won't have much fat covering their upper abs, but many will still have that "pouch" covering the lower abs.
To get visible abs, check out our Best Cutting Workout & Diet Plan and our 4 Week Meal Plan For Weight Loss!
Your abs are involved in pretty much every single movement you make. So, of course, it's going to be important to have them in tip-top shape.
The bonus is, working out your abs will make them more defined in time. You'll notice some nice, bigger, sharper looking abs when you achieve a lower body fat percentage. Sure, they don't have serious growth potential like other muscles (thankfully as that could get weird), and some people are naturally born with thicker abs, but anyone can develop their abs to make them standout more.
You just need to put in the work.
Looking for more great ab content? Check out our articles on the Best Lower Ab Exercises, Best Bodyweight Core Exercises, and the Best Resistance Band Core Exercises!
References:
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