HoodiaPharm HungerAway
Friday, March 14, 2008 Exercising Your Obliques

Emphasis on midriff-baring fashion in recent years has brought the abdominals into the limelight. Smooth, slender torsos are prized by women, while men are expected to bare a chiseled eight-pack. To achieve this ideal physique, a lot of people devote a big chunk of their workout time to abs exercises.
Unfortunately, the blanket-approach to abs training isn't very effective. You must realize that your abdominals are actually comprised of three major muscles. Each muscle has its own function and thus specific ways to target it.

One of the three abdominal muscles is the obliques. They are divided into external and internal, and reside on both sides of the mid section. Both sets of obliques have the same two main functions: torso lateral flexion, which is bending the upper half of your body side to side, and torso rotation, which is twisting your upper body away from your torso. As you can see, the obliques are used in any movement in which your torso bends laterally or twists.

Old-school obliques exercises involved putting a broomstick behind your shoulders and twisting umpteen times to the right and left or holding hand weights and bending side to side. Today, there are other exercises that recruit and isolate obliques muscle fibers better, such as side and bicycle crunches. Remember too that in many exercises, the abdominals get an extra hit because they're working to stabilize the torso while doing the moves that target other muscles. Most common among these are exercises where your body is held in a plank position, such as push-ups.

Posted by HoodiaPharm HungerAway :: 5:34 AM :: 0 comments

Post / Read Comments

---------------oOo---------------