Your abs are an important part of your core strength. Your core is where all movements in the body originate from. The stronger your core, the stronger and more effective the movements are. Your abs help protect your internal organs and assist with breathing. The abdominal muscles work with your lower back muscles and work with motions such as twisting.

Exercises such as sit ups, crunches, reverse crunches and hanging leg lifts can strengthen you abs and core. You can also enhance these exercises by using a sit up board or exerciseball/swiss ball.

Spartan style exercises

To get abs stronger than a brick wall, you can perform double crunches which is a crunch and reverse crunch all done in one motion. You could also do long arm crunches which is a standard crunch with your arms raised above your head. This makes it harder to raise your upper body as your arms add to the weight. Weighted hanging leg raises would hit your lower abdominals hard. Put a light weight between your feet.