To work out your upper abdominal muscles you should concentrate on doing crunches.  Crunches are relatively easy to perform but will really burn your upper muscle group. To perform a good crunch exercise you will need to put your hands behind your head.  Lift your shoulder blades slightly up off the ground just enough to feel the burn. It  is not necessary to do a full sit up exercise. The key is to concentrate on your upper abdominal muscles. Pick a spot on the ceiling and look at it while pulling up.  You can make your muscles work even harder if you find a spot where you can  grab a hold of an object with your feet(like a weight training bench or lodge your feet under an object on the floor). A repeated low repetition exercise will help burn the fat and feed your muscles.

Your lower abdominal muscles are developed and exercised by the lower part of your body. Leg raises are perfect when developing the lower abs. To do this exercise:

• Instead of lifting your head and shoulders off the ground keep your shoulders in place and lift up your legs. Keep your hands to the side of your body to help stabilize your core.( You don’t want to wobble back and forth while your legs are moving.)

• Raise up your legs while you are laying on your back and keep your legs straight. Focus on the burn in your lower stomach and then little by little lower your legs and repeat this same exercise for several times.

• Your legs should be straight and lifted about a forty five degree angle, make sure you keep your legs off the ground when bringing them down.

They say the lower abs is the most difficult part to develop. However, if you do this exercise the right way, expect to have the perfect washboard abs. The lower abdominal area of your stomach usually holds the fat.  It seems like its very hard to get rid of, but in fact you need to do more than lower abdominal exercises. Doing an exercise alone is not guarantee losing belly fat.

Do about eight to ten repetitions.

No abs are perfect but you can get ready for the warm weather and really make yourself look good, reduce your waist size and feel better about yourself.

Some simple exercises that can help you maintain your strength and at the same time help your back are as follows.

• Lay down on your stomach and raise yourself off the ground by using your elbows, forearms and hands.

• Your elbows, forearms and hands should form an L shape so your shoulder would be the top of the letter L and your hands should be the bottom of the letter L with your elbow being the ninety degree angle in the shape of the letter.
• The area from your elbow to your hands should be the only spot touching the ground along with your toes.
• You should use some type of padding to reduce stress on your elbows and forearms case they will receive most of he weight.

Keep your hips, knees, and stomach off the ground keeping your body straight, supporting yourself so your body is parallel to the ground. Your toes should be holding you up. While you are holding this position keep your stomach tight and straight off the ground. You probably wont feel the burning sensation that you are used to when performing stomach exercises, which could be a good thing.

If for some reason you cant hold your knees off the ground you can put your knees down initially.  Ideally you should be able to hold this position for about 3 minutes.  Start slow and try for 30 seconds then the next time you try it increase your time, but do it gradually so you don’t hurt yourself.

Gradually like any exercise you should be able to hold your self up and you will have a stronger core, stronger abdominal muscles and therefore have a stronger back.