New Video: The Ab Wheel

Archive post from 5/23/22

The ab wheel is a popular piece of training equipment because it’s compact, inexpensive, and, when used correctly, effective at developing trunk strength. Unfortunately, it’s easy to do incorrectly, so it also has a somewhat deserved reputation as a risky exercise for back pain.

I typically don’t use the ab wheel in my online strength coaching and writing. I have found that rowers need thorough and continual coaching to be able to do it correctly and stick to an appropriate progression of challenge, and I cannot provide this as a writer or remote coach.

I see the ab wheel as similar to the barbell deadlift from the floor or an unassisted chin-up. These are potentially good exercises that tend to get misused and overused to negative effect. For some reason, rowers tend to see movements like this as pure output challenges, and will compete with themselves or others to total failure and do anything they need to do to achieve maximal reps on every set, pushing past the point of movement breakdown into counterproductive levels of full-body strain and injury risk.

Good movement quality is the #1 priority of strength training for rowers. There is no point training from bad positions and building strength with poor movement patterns. The strength will not transfer to improved rowing or erging performance, and training in bad positions exposes vulnerable parts of the body to risk of injury. I consider “failure” the point at which the athlete cannot achieve any more weight or reps with good technique, not when they literally drop the weight, fall to the floor, or significantly alter technique to achieve another rep. The former is “technical failure,” the latter is “muscular/total failure.”

Anyway, back to the ab wheel. 

Whatever ab wheel variation you use, the spine needs to stay stable during the movement, with no significant flexion or extension occurring during the rep. The shoulder also needs to be stable, with movement at the hands occurring with minimal movement at the shoulder. The hip joint should open on the eccentric phase (into extension at the bottom position) and close on the concentric phase (into flexion at the top position) like a hinge, with the abdominal muscles making the movement happen.

If you can achieve this through a decent range of motion, then you can do ab wheel and gradually progress range of motion, tempo, volume, and exercise progression to add challenge. If the spine or shoulders move too much, or you feel the tension in your back or shoulders rather than in the abdominals, then pick another exercise for your core training. There are plenty to choose from, and no reason to get locked onto the ab wheel if it doesn’t work for you.