I make $7.50 an hour working nights at the Comfort Inn, so just maintaining a good diet is strenuous enough on my pocket book. There's no way I can possibly afford a gym membership.

Reading the boards, it seems fairly obvious that the consensus here is that weighted cable crunches are the way to go for building strong abs.

Without access to a gym, or the money and extra space necessary to buy my own cable equipment, I'd like to know if there are any alternatives for working my abs. I've been relying solely on weighted crunches (weight plates) on a decline bench press and hanging leg lifts for my ab workout, but I'm far from even approaching the 4-6 (or even 6-8) rep range. Suggestions?

Buy a swiss ball/excersize ball... $20-30 or so depending on size. It's gives you a lot of vareity on what you do.

Personally, I rarely use weights on abs. I want flat abs, not big abs. :) I tend to stick with 3 sets of 20+ depending on the exercise.

I make $7.50 an hour working nights at the Comfort Inn, so just maintaining a good diet is strenuous enough on my pocket book. There's no way I can possibly afford a gym membership.
Really? Do you live at home with your parents? Apartment on your own? Roommates? I find that maybe 1% of the people who say they can't afford a gym membership actually cannot afford it. Most of the people that say this to me are sitting at home with broadband internet ($40/month), cable ($40/month), phone ($30-$40/month), cell phone (could get expensive), etc. I'm not saying this is the case for you, but "there's no way I can possibly afford" is a really strong phrase. I'll bet if it was important enough you'd find the money.

Is it necessary though? Not at all! You can get a good ab workout at home on the floor. Actually you could probably get JUST AS GOOD of an ab workout, dare I say better, at home on the floor.

Reading the boards, it seems fairly obvious that the consensus here is that weighted cable crunches are the way to go for building strong abs.
Who said this? I love this exercise but it's not the only way to build abs. It's just easy to do and it really overloads the muscles. It's hard to do weighted ab exercises but you could just hold a gallon of milk in your hands and do crunches if you had to.

Without access to a gym, or the money and extra space necessary to buy my own cable equipment, I'd like to know if there are any alternatives for working my abs. I've been relying solely on weighted crunches (weight plates) on a decline bench press and hanging leg lifts for my ab workout, but I'm far from even approaching the 4-6 (or even 6-8) rep range. Suggestions?
Dude those are all great exercises, keep it up.

You won't reveal those abs until your diet is in check, your cardio is going well, and until you really lose the bodyfat. The exercises just increase the strength and/or size of the ab muscles, and you have to diet and do cardio to lose the fat on top of the stomach for those abs to show.

Good luck!

Squats and deads are the best ab exercises that I've ever done... Pullovers rank up there too. I do about three sets of weighted crunches per week. The rest is diet.

I find that maybe 1% of the people who say they can't afford a gym membership actually cannot afford it.
Just to add to what 1FastGTX said, you may want to look closely at the gyms in your area if you're interested. Where I am, I have 3 gyms that are relatively close to me; Gold's Gym, Fitness World and Natuilus Fitness. Gold's Gym and Fitness World are around $40-$50 per month, lots of shiny equipment, TVs, all the bells and whistles. Nautilus Fitness is located in a fairly run down building, the bench's have rips patched with duct tape and the weights are not shiny. They charge $169 per year (yes, year) and they have the most dedicated weight lifters you will find at any other gym I have ever seen, and they swear by the place. My point is, you may have a gym like this in your area and you don't need to go to Bally's Fitness to get a good workout.

All that said, I still prefer working out at home and get a great ab workout just doing bicycle crunches and leg lifts.

Weighted crunches are definitely NOT the key right out of the gate. Most people who jump on those prematurely aren't getting full quality out of their workout. When you focus and contract your abs appropriately, you can workout for YEARS without ever adding external resistance. I have yet to find a person who does weighted abdominal work, short of competitive bodybuilders, who actually perform a crunch or leg raise correctly to keep the tension on the abs.

All you need is an inexpensive door-frame pull up bar, and you can do all the ab work you need - here is a sample of workouts ...

Core and abdominal training - great abs! (http://www.naturalphysiques.com/cms/index.php?itemid=103)

Jeremy

I make $7.50 an hour working nights at the Comfort Inn, so just maintaining a good diet is strenuous enough on my pocket book. There's no way I can possibly afford a gym membership.

Reading the boards, it seems fairly obvious that the consensus here is that weighted cable crunches are the way to go for building strong abs.

Without access to a gym, or the money and extra space necessary to buy my own cable equipment, I'd like to know if there are any alternatives for working my abs. I've been relying solely on weighted crunches (weight plates) on a decline bench press and hanging leg lifts for my ab workout, but I'm far from even approaching the 4-6 (or even 6-8) rep range. Suggestions?

Heh heh, that's exactly what I wanted to hear. :D

When I say I can't afford a gym membership, I mean it. I live with roommates, and we split the cost of pretty much everything, but I'm still usually pretty strained. Between rent, bills (we have broadband cable--which we split evenly--but no TV, and no cell phone for me), food (lots of it), insurance, gas, and a little bit of spending cash, I'm pretty much broke in between checks. I'd like to get a cell phone too, but like the gym membership, that'll have to wait until my raise. Of course, I should probably get out of debt before I even consider doing either one, eh?

The swiss ball, however, I think I can swing. Thanks for the suggestion. And thanks also for the links--good stuff. One of my roommates does pilates, which she swears by, so I'm going to start adding some of that to my stretching routine as well.

Just to add to what 1FastGTX said, you may want to look closely at the gyms in your area if you're interested. Where I am, I have 3 gyms that are relatively close to me; Gold's Gym, Fitness World and Natuilus Fitness. Gold's Gym and Fitness World are around $40-$50 per month, lots of shiny equipment, TVs, all the bells and whistles. Nautilus Fitness is located in a fairly run down building, the bench's have rips patched with duct tape and the weights are not shiny. They charge $169 per year (yes, year) and they have the most dedicated weight lifters you will find at any other gym I have ever seen, and they swear by the place. My point is, you may have a gym like this in your area and you don't need to go to Bally's Fitness to get a good workout.

All that said, I still prefer working out at home and get a great ab workout just doing bicycle crunches and leg lifts.
Honestly I would much rather be at the run-down gym than the shiny one. I go to Gold's but only cause it's right by my house. It's almost too "nice" for me! I don't get it. They have tvs everywhere. They have a sattelite program on all the time and in between music videos the commercial says "Gold's Gym TV, Dedicated to making your workout more entertaining." WHAT!? I can watch TV at home!!!! I'm here to work baby!

Personally, I rarely use weights on abs. I want flat abs, not big abs. :)

That is a huge misconception that many people have. Using weights on abs will not give you a massive slab of portruding ab muscle flesh.

The aesthetic difference between having abs at a low bodyfat and having well (unweighted) worked abs at that same bodyfat is huge! Likewise, the difference between these well unweighted worked abs and well weighted worked abs is huge!

But, of course, as Jeremy pointed out, you can have phenomenal abs from only unweighted exercise, but to do so requires a knowledge and understanding of how your abs function that most casual weight-trainers don't possess.

Also, you may have seen pictures of bodybuilders with what almost looks like abs plastered on top of a large protruding gut. This could be the result of drug use or having a weak transversus abdominis. This is not normal! The transversus supports your core and helps maintain higher intra-abdominal pressure, which has the effect of keeping your stomach flatter.

Check out Jeremy's article which gives tons of great information on these subjects:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/likness28.htm