Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

I remember when I was 16 years old, I saw an amazing contraption advertised on TV.

It was a special device designed to hold up against your stomach

while you engaged in a maximum ab contraction. It promised a fast six-pack and a midsection that

would surely turn heads at the beach. So with my hard-earned money, I ordered it and it arrived at my

house a week later. I excitedly unwrapped it to find a cheap

plastic piece of equipment that I actually managed to break within a month. And unfortunately, my abs

did not get any tighter. Well, despite the unproven efficacy of made-for-TV, stomach flattening, ab tightening, and six-pack-promising exercise devices,

health clubs, home gyms, and exercise enthusiasts everywhere continue to amass everything from ab rollers to crunch machines to electrical muscle stomach stimulators,

all in the hopes of chasing the elusive flat abs.

Well, in this episode, I'm going to give you the best two exercises for a flat stomach,

and I think you'll be pretty surprised at what they are.

So let's first look into whether or not any of these ab machines actually work.

Well, the short answer is yes, but much less than you might think.

Here's how.

In the episode How to Get a Flat Stomach, which I'll link to in the show notes over at quick and dirty tips.com,

I explain that the best way to get a flat stomach is to include a workout made up of exercises

that target all the muscles of your midsection, including your rectus abdominis, which is the

front of your abs, the external and internal obliques, which are basically the sides of your

abs, and the transversus abdominis, which is the bottom of your abs or your lower

abs. And you also need to work the postural muscles of your low back so that you maintain good

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