Like many people, we at Tom's Guide love ab workouts.

While abdominal exercises are great for strengthening the muscle groups that make up the core, you can also use compound exercises to strengthen the core and work a variety of other muscles. Compound exercises are multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises such as squats and push-ups that can be performed at home or in the gym with or without weights.

Incorporating compound exercises into your strength training is more effective because they work your muscles more efficiently. Adjustable dumbbells are recommended for home training.

While the best abdominal training is a great supplement to any training regime, strong core muscles are not only aesthetically pleasing. They support better posture and movement, protect the spine, and help the trunk move and lift heavier and run faster. The rectus abdominis (six-pack muscle) gets the most attention in the gym, but it's not the only muscle worth noting.

If your goal this year is to get stronger and more defined core muscles, I recommend expanding your repertoire of abdominal exercises to include compound movements. You can target muscles such as the glutes (yes, they are trunk muscles), internal obliques, external obliques, transverse abdominis (the deep belt of trunk muscles that encircle the torso), and erector spinae (the muscles that support the spine).

You don't need to isolate these muscles for hours in the gym to get results. Compound exercises meet the requirements for efficiency and effectiveness. [To lose fat and create a toned body, you need to improve your diet, hormones, stress, and sleep. Here we explain how to calculate body fat percentage and why it matters.

These five compound exercises can be done for any ability and any training time. We recommend 15 minutes, but you can increase or decrease the time depending on your goals and experience.

This routine is a combination of 5 dumbbell exercises in a complex. This means that you move from one movement to the next without rest. Choose a moderate to heavy set of dumbbells or start with a lighter set until you are comfortable with each movement.

The workout should be AMRAP, i.e., as many rounds as possible, two reps per exercise, adding two reps each round. Take short breaks between rounds.

Renegade rows target the deep stabilizers of the torso and the upper body, including the back and biceps. One fitness writer did 40 renegade rows a day for a week.

Method:

From the renegade row position, jump both feet outside of hands and lift both dumbbells forward. This is how the kettlebell swing is done. The American Swing means swinging the weights higher and above your head.

How to:

From the swing, move to the bent-over row. Click here to see how to do dumbbell rows. [29] [30] How to do: [31] [32] From a standing position, grab the dumbbells on each side and move into burpees. Click here to see how to do burpees. [33] [34] How to do: [35] [36] From a standing position, begin thrusters. [37] [38] How to do it: [39] [40] If you have never seen a complex before, this five-move barbell complex workout is an instruction manual for beginners to learn how to move between exercises in "flow". Do not rest between movements, simply move on to the next movement and rest between rounds. Stack maximum reps and rounds within the specified maximum time limit.