One of the most frequently exercise-neglected areas of the body is your abdomen. The abdominals help hold your spine straight and your digestive organs in place, they serve a very important function. Young women with good abdominal tone fair much better in the labour ward than their flabby sisters, good abdominal tone helps your digestion and the cosmetic appeal of a flat belly on men or women is so obvious it hardly needs mentioning.
Sit ups and crunches may still be the most commonly used abdominal exercises but they are not best practice and are likely to cause or worsen lower back pain. They do not work the most important abdominal muscles, overwork your hip flexors which are probably already too tight and are bad for your posture. With the weight of your upper body rocking vigorously backwards and forwards over your lop sided hips, the SI (sacro-iliac) joints become even more off-centre and can cause chronic lower back and hip pain.
A lot of people give up on their abdominal tone because the only exercises they were brought up to believe in just give them back pain. One way you can help your abs is to suck your belly in and tense it several times through the day and hold it there for a couple of minutes each time, you can do this even sitting at your desk at work. Doing this will help keep your back straighter too.
Erik Goodman’s Foundation exercises are amongst the best I seen for abdominal core strength, they have the advantage of being mainly executed in the a standing position making them more accessible for older people and exercise multiple muscles simultaneously, you can see some of these demonstrated on Youtube.
Chin ups (Pull ups) are another good example of multiple muscles being strenuously and symmetrically put to work at the same time, your lats, biceps, upper back, wrist flexors and abs are all engaged with this exercise that only requires an overhead bar to support your body weight.
Walking or running up stairs can be a convenient whole body way to fit short burst of exercise into your busy day, you don’t need to be in a gym to exercise.
Swimming is an exercise that works multiple muscles simultaneously though obviously not nearly as conveniently. Cardio unlike stretching and strengthening requires more time dedication but can be easily accommodated by walking or cycling to work and back.
Some stretching exercises work numerous muscles at the same time too, if you want to make exercising more compact and time efficient you will find some good examples in Self Massage & + 40 Fitness.