Bottom line is we want our business suits, swim suits and birthday suits looking awesome, now and forever, right? (Psst...Remember this is El Lay, not Berkeley, California.) Come on, you've seen the Bally's Health Club television spots that play like skin-flick previews. Whew! TV screen steams up every time. Don't we all buy into it? You may even own a pair of Calvin Klein underwear, too. Bummer the abs in the ads aren't included with the briefs. Oh, well. Guess we gotta work for 'em. With that in mind, here are some mid section training techniques that ensure bigger fitness bang for your buck, so to speak.

What do your abs do, anyway? For our needs, right now they function to flex the spine. In other words, they round your back. You know this movement as a crunch. Visualize curling your rib cage toward your pelvis; or, curling your pelvis toward your rib cage. That's spinal flexion in the form of a crunch or a reverse crunch, respectively. That's all there is to it. It's that easy. Sort of...

Plenty of exercisers try this, and don't get it. Not too surprising. But, lots of trainers attempt doing & teaching this and fail, too. I see it daily. Un-#%@&-be-LEEV-ah-bull. Guess that's why there are ab machines. But, you really don't need one. Read on and join our ab training elite!

Click abdominals (left) to view detail. Then, try doing a real crunch.