In the event you listed the preferred ab exercises, there could be some familiar contenders like crunches, planks, and leg raises, little doubt. But one dark horse within the race is the Russian twist.
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You’ll see it performed by bodybuilders, fitness influencers, “functional fitness” athletes who wear toe-gripping shoes that appear like gloves, group-fitness worshipers, and cardio enthusiasts.
One reason why it’s so often used is that it permits you to really feel you abdominal muscles working, almost no matter how well the exercise is definitely performed. You’ll be able to do it “fallacious” and still feel some form of burn since you’re bending and twisting. A greater reason why it’s so popular is since it targets nearly every muscle in your core, including the rarely targeted oblique muscles.
Here’s the best way to be sure you do the Russian twist the suitable solution to get that deep burn in your abs and obliques, not your lower back.
The right way to Do the Russian Twist
The Russian twist is performed seated on the bottom and appears quite easy, but there are some very vital steps that usually get missed. These small changes will make an enormous difference.
Step One — Find Your Feet
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Sit on the bottom, bend your knees, and point your feet as much as dig your heels into the bottom. Bring your feet and heels near your glutes and hips, which can be your fulcrum to maneuver your upper body. Having your feet closer to your hips goes to offer you more stability. Hold your hands together in front of your chest.
Form Tip: Keep your feet flexed and pointed up during your entire movement. Pointing your feet goes to do two things: First, it’s going to maintain your weight shifted backward through your hips and into the bottom, providing you with more stability. Second, it’s going to assist engage your hamstrings, which is able to then help to tuck your pelvis under through the movement. This helps engage more of your lower lower abs and internal oblique muscles as an alternative of your hip flexors. (1)
Step Two — Tuck Your Chin and Roll Back
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Imagine you’re attempting to hold an orange between your chin and upper chest. Tuck your chin right down to hold it in place. This can stack your rib cage over your pelvis, so you’ll be able to flex your abs and maintain core tension. It should also encourage your upper back to round so your lats can “wrap” around your ribs. In the event you try twisting your body while keeping a tall posture along with your shoulders down and back, you’ll have the mobility of an elephant on a tightrope.
You should definitely roll back, not only lean back. In the event you quickly lean back out of your hips, you’re likely going to increase your spine and lose the stable position you worked to get into. As an alternative, imagine you’re about to do a backwards roll and “uncurl” yourself into position. Allow your center of mass to be drawn backwards and use your feet to interact your hamstrings for stability.
Form Tip: How far must you roll back? In the event you’re laying on the ground, you’ve gone too far. In the event you can’t feel your heels digging hard into the ground, you almost certainly haven’t rolled back far enough. Aim for a 5 – 6 out of 10 effort to carry the position.
Step Three — Look Over Your Shoulder
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With control, twist as much of your torso as possible to at least one side. In the event you’re doing it right, it should feel like someone karate chopped you in the surface a part of your obliques (muscles on the perimeters of your abs). Then, rotate all of the solution to the opposite side. Alternate backwards and forwards between sides with each repetition.
Form Tip: Look over your shoulder behind you, attempting to get your shoulders to 12 and 6 on an imaginary clock. All and sundry can have a rather different range of motion depending on their mobility and strength, so work inside your individual comfortable range.
Russian Twist Mistakes to Avoid
Be certain that whenever you’re performing the Russian twist, it looks good and feels good. Don’t let your technique slip as you fatigue and don’t grind through painful, improper form. Listed below are some common mistakes to look at out for.
Extending Your Back
In case your chin and rib cage aren’t tucked whenever you roll back into position, then chances are you’ll find yourself in extension along with your abs are in a lengthened position. The more prolonged you’re, the more lengthened your abs can be. This shifts stress away out of your targeted ab muscles.
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When a muscle contracts, it shortens, so although you would possibly “feel” your ab muscles working, you’re not setting yourself up for achievement to properly train and strengthen them since they won’t give you the option to effectively shorten or fully contract.
Avoid it: Don’t roll back quite as far. That way, you’ll be able to maintain a greater chin and ribcage tuck. Give attention to making the exercise harder through the use of a full rotation, not by attempting to lean way back to possible.
Not Actually Rotating
This one is one of the common problems. Some people swing their arms backward and forward like a malfunctioning lawn sprinkler, but they’re not rotating their torso or shoulders.
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With this misapplied “technique,” you would possibly feel some tension in your abdominals because they’re simply resisting rotation, but there’s not much working within the obliques because they’re not moving through any real range of motion.
Avoid it: Keep your hands as near your body as possible. You should utilize them to assist guide the rotation to all sides, however the farther your hands move away out of your center, the more your arms will wish to swing. Until you master the movement, keep your hands close.
Kicking Your Legs Out
When your legs are prolonged too far, it’s harder to shift your center of mass back while keeping your hips tucked under properly. This implies there’s less load, tension, work sent through your abdominal muscles and obliques, and also you’ll most probably feel the burn in your hip flexors and the highest a part of your quads (thighs).
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Straight legs also make it difficult to drive your heels into the bottom, which is able to limit your hamstring engagement and affect your abdominal activation.
Avoid it: Listen to your entire lower body. Bend your knees, pulling your feet and heels back towards your glutes and hips. Point your feet and dig your heels into the bottom. This can help to interact your hamstrings and lengthen your quads and hip flexors so that they can’t take over.
The right way to Progress the Russian Twist
One general goal of coaching is to steadily progress each movement or exercise for consistent improvement. Nevertheless, almost anyone could make an exercise “feel” more difficult. You could be sure you’re are making it harder in a productive way.
Arms-Prolonged Russian Twist
Reaching your arms forward, away out of your body’s center, goes to create an extended lever with increased challenge on your entire core. Once you rotate, don’t let your arms take over or move individually out of your torso.
You should definitely fully rotate by looking over your shoulders. The altered leverage goes so as to add more relative load for increased challenge, especially in the long run ranges of motion.
Dumbbell Russian Twist
Adding resistance is essentially the most common solution to make a body weight ab exercise more difficult. Through the use of a dumbbell, or a single weight plate, you increase the force needed to rotate your torso. You should definitely proceed using a full range of motion, aiming your shoulders in a 12 and 6 position.
Begin holding the burden near your chest. As you gain strength, you’ll be able to hold the burden farther out of your body, within the arms-extended position, before going heavier. This permits you to squeeze more overall progression from relatively lighter weights.
Decline Russian Twist
Using a decline bench will shift more of your weight backwards due to steeper angle working against gravity. Regardless that your legs are securely hooked into the bench, you must still actively attempt to dig your heels in to get your hips tucked under.
The increased angle of the decline bench must also allow each individual to get more range of motion towards the tip of every rep.
Advantages of the Russian Twist
Many ab exercises train your central core muscles — the abdominals above your hips. The Russian twist incorporates rotation, which not only recruits additional muscles but creates more stimulus for quite a lot of results.
Good-Looking Abs
Ab training alone won’t deliver an amazing set of abs. You could listen to calories and nutrition, too. But incorporating the Russian twist into your ab workout can provide some attention to your oblique muscles, while hitting your most important “6-pack” abs with a serious growth stimulus. Training your abs for muscle growth won’t create a blocky-looking stomach area, but it’s going to play a job in making a classic washboard look.
Athletic Ab Strength
Rotational movements are sometimes missed in terms of constructing a robust, powerful core. (2) Training your abs with rotation, just like the Russian twist, might help to construct inter-muscular coordination that may carryover to the sector, while constructing general core strength and stability that might help support heavy lifting.
Muscles Worked by Russian Twist
The Russian twist works greater than just “your abs.” It emphasizes your oblique muscles, while calling much of your entire upper body into play.
Obliques
The obliques are the muscles on the perimeters of your abs that frame the six-pack. They run diagonally at an oblique angle, which is where they get their name. More accurately, there are two kinds of oblique muscles on all sides of your body — the interior obliques and the external obliques. The inner obliques are found deeper in your core, while the external obliques are more visible.
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When twisting your body, the external obliques are accountable for contralateral rotation — the external oblique in your left helps you rotate to the suitable, and vice versa. These are the prime mover at first a part of each rep. Once you have got rotated past the midpoint, the interior oblique is recruited for ipsilateral rotation — the interior obliques in your right allow you to complete rotation to the suitable. The inner obliques are usually not often trained, so don’t be surprised should you feel a deep burn at the tip range of every twist.
Rectus Abdominis
The classic six-pack is definitely a series of muscles referred to as the rectus abdominis. Throughout the Russian twist, the rectus works to brace down and resist movement, because they’re primarily involved in traditional flexion exercises like crunches or sit-ups. This muscle works isometrically to maintain your upper body stacked and stable through the twist.
Transverse Abdominis
Just like the film Inception where there’s a dream inside a dream, the transverse abdominis is basically a set of abs under one other set of abs. It’s a skinny sheet of muscle found underneath the rectus abdominis. The transverse abdominis, or TVA, primarily works isometrically to keep up postural tension. It also increases abdominal wall pressure to stabilize the spine and pelvis when moving, including during rotation. (3)
Hip Flexors
As their name suggests, the hip flexors are primarily involved in creating flexion (bending) at your hips. Reaching the highest portion of that hip flexion, along with your legs bent at an angle to your upper body, is when you’ll be able to create a posterior pelvic tilt to focus on the lower abdominal muscles. (4)
Erector Spinae
The erector spinae, or spinal erectors, are deep muscles in your back that sit underneath the more well-known back muscles just like the lats, rhomboids, and trapezius. The erector spinae extends your upper body backwards and creates lateral (side to side) flexion. Throughout the Russian twist, they’re involved more toward the tip of every twist as your body reaches its peak range of motion.
The right way to Program the Russian Twist
The Russian twist isn’t just a few random ab exercise. Since it trains your core in a novel way, with rotation as an alternative of more traditional flexion, it could play a key role in your workouts.
Timed Circuits
This body weight ab exercise suits efficiently right into a abdominal circuit performed at the tip of any workout. Mix this with timed sets — performing continuous repetitions in a given time as an alternative of counting individual reps — and also you’ve got a winning pair.
Timed sets let you simply give attention to the standard of your work, and the clock will prevent at the tip. Good options are to make use of either 30 second of labor with 30 of rest or 40 seconds of labor with 20 seconds rest. Pick three to 5 exercises, including the Russian twist, and do two to 4 rounds a minimum of twice per week.
Unweighted to Light Weight, Moderate to High Repetition
In the event you’re performing the Russian twist as a standalone exercise, not a part of a circuit, you’ll be able to burn your core using two to a few sets of 15 to 25 reps. Do not forget that turning each to the left and right counts as one rep. You’ll reduce your workload should you count “right, one, left, two, right, three, left, 4,” etc.
Russian Twist Variations
When you’ve gotten a handle on the essential Russian twist, you’ll be able to upgrade the exercise to hit your abs with harder movements.
Bicycle Twist
When paired with a specialized fat loss weight-reduction plan, this progression is usually a key player in developing abs that feel and appear like they’ve been carved from wealthy mahogany. As you rotate to look over your right shoulder, pull your right knee in towards your chest. But the most important secret’s to not touch your elbow and knee together, as should you were doing a classic bicycle crunch.
To get a full range of motion using full hip flexion, your left elbow should pass your right knee as you twist. Keep the other foot braced and hooked into the ground. You could have to go slow with this one since it involves some coordination. Try taking three seconds to succeed in each rotation and hold the tip position for a temporary pause.
Overhead Russian Twist
This movement is analogous to the essential dumbbell Russian twist, but brings the arms in an overhead motion to further change the leverage and recruit the shoulders, serratus, and upper back muscles.
Don’t sacrifice range of motion. Bring the burden from one side of your body, to a straight-arm overhead position, to the other side of your body.
Standing Russian Twist
Sometimes called a full contact twist, this standing movement is one among the more athletic variations since it’s performed in a standing position and involves your entire lower body.
Use a barbell in a landmine unit to permit a smooth rotation backward and forward. This exercise could be done along with your feet stationary while moving the burden from hip to hip or, as a more advanced variation, pivoting on the balls of your feet and moving the burden from mid-thigh to mid-thigh.
FAQs
Will training my obliques make me look fatter?
No, only body fat can do this. Training any muscle, even your abdominals and obliques, will construct lean muscle which improves your physique and your performance.
What some people call “love handles” is definitely body fat stored generally across the oblique region. Body fat is stored throughout your body in a genetically determined manner and training the muscle underneath that stored fat is not going to increase those fat levels. If it did, than anyone who trained their triceps with weights could be prone to creating jiggly “batwings” as an alternative of constructing muscular arms.
Can I lift my feet off the ground to make the exercise harder?
You could possibly lift your feet, but it surely wouldn’t really be harder in a productive way. The purpose of getting your feet down is to stabilize your hips and more effectively isolate the movement through your abdominal muscles. Together with your feet up within the air, it’s going to be harder to maintain your pelvis tucked and harder to stop your hip flexors taking up, which each reduce ab activation. It should even be harder to attain the tip ranges of motion because your hips aren’t locked in place and your entire body can be moving as you twist.
Is using a drugs ball a very good solution to progress the exercise?
It could possibly be, when it’s done right. A drugs ball (identical to a dumbbell or weight plate) does add load, which is a simple solution to increase the intensity of any exercise. However the added load shouldn’t distract you from the most important technique objective, which is fully rotating your body, not only moving the ball backward and forward.
In the event you use a drugs ball, tap it just behind each hip as you twist to either side. This cue will remind you to make use of an extended range of motion.
C’mon and Do the Twist
Once you design your next ab workout, don’t overfocus on crunch variations and planks. Rotational exercises just like the Russian twist goal underappreciated muscles just like the obliques and help to develop serious core power. When you learn to perform the movement accurately, you’ll be on the solution to making a stronger core with a whole and well-developed set of abs.
References
- Workman, Chad & Docherty, David & Parfrey, Kevin & Behm, David. (2008). Influence of Pelvis Position on the Activation of Abdominal and Hip Flexor Muscles. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association. 22. 1563-9. 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181739981.
- Stephens, J; Bacon, E; Evans, C; Locke, S; and McCulloch, R (2021) “ANTI-ROTATIONAL AND ROTATIONAL ABDOMINAL EXERCISES AND THE CONCURRENT MUSCLE ACTIVATION: A METHODOLOGY STUDY,” International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings: Vol. 8: Iss. 9, Article 12.
- Urquhart, D. M., & Hodges, P. W. (2005). Differential activity of regions of transversus abdominis during trunk rotation. European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society, 14(4), 393–400. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-004-0799-9
- Takaki, S., Ms Pt, Kaneoka, K., PhD Md, Okubo, Y., PhD Pt, Otsuka, S., Ms, Tatsumura, M., PhD Md, Shiina, I., PhD Md, & Miyakawa, S., PhD Md (2016). Evaluation of muscle activity during energetic pelvic tilting in sagittal plane. Physical therapy research, 19(1), 50–57. https://doi.org/10.1298/ptr.e9900
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