If you've ever been to a gym I'm sure you will have seen the cradle devices that they have for doing abs exercises. I wanted to get one of these for my home gym, as I think they help in ensuring that you do your crunches in good form with your neck properly supported. My back is in good shape at the moment, but I have had trouble with it in the past, so I'm keen to look after it.

I checked a few fitness equipment sites and was surprised to see that the version that you tend to see in the gyms costs over £100. I suppose they get a lot of use and so need to be suitably heavy duty. I wasn't intending to spend that much but by searching a bit further I found the Weider Crunch Trainer which is a much more reasonable price. I bought mine from here.

It seems to work perfectly well, really no different to the gym versions. It also comes with a booklet and also a DVD showing then different exercises that you can do with it. These are all variations on the basic theme of upper abs, lower abs and obliques exercises, but they are graded according to how advanced you are.