Obliques?
 

I think I read something here recently about the downsides of doing side bends to train the obliques. Someone mentioned that focusing on the obliques (or lifting heavy with them, anyway) can actually make your waist larger by building up those muscles. I'm still doing ab work, but I cut out the side bends after that and I've noticed that my stomach is getting smaller but I haven't seen any new progress in my waist for awhile. I vary my ab routine pretty often, about every week or so.

Does anyone here do specific exercises for the obliques, or do you just do ab work that happens to hit them? Are side bends really that bad?

I don't do side bends and I don't have my client do side bend. But we do a lot of side twists. Your obliques are really rotational muscles and should be trained that way.

Mel

I do the bicycle lying on the floor.
One tip I got somewhere which really helped was to reach your elbow to the far side of your knee --you need the full twisting movement to work the obliques and I do them fairly slowly.
My obliques look good!:D

For obliques I like to rotate bicycle crunches, side planks, penguins and Russian twists on a swiss ball and seated twists. The most challenging for me are the Russian twists and the seated medicine ball oblique twists with my feet off the ground, balancing on my butt. After 3 sets of 20 of each I'm dying! And if I'm working out with DH we often do a seated oblique toss with a medicine ball, rotating sides after each set.

Lately I've been doing some Yoga and the twists and turns seem to be making a difference on my obliques :dance:

Thanks guys. I'll try adding in some exercises with more twisting motion and see if that helps! :)

What's so wrong wth side bends...I feel like they help tighten up my flabbiness on the sides? I also do bicycles!