Ab Rollout with Barbell

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ BarbellIntermediateCompoundLower back (2°)Shoulders (2°)

How to do the ab rollout with barbell

  1. Place a barbell on the floor at your feet.
  2. Bending at the waist, grip the barbell with a shoulder with overhand grip.
  3. With a slow controlled motion, roll the bar out so that your back is straight.
  4. Keep your arms straight throughout the exercise.
  5. Roll back up raising your hips and butt as you return to the starting position.
  6. Note: Practice raising your hips and butt as high as you can with this exercise.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the lower back keeps the spine from rounding; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range.

Every exercise for:AbdominalsLower backShoulders

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:Barbell

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 17 are listed at intermediate level.

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.