Are you looking for an oblique workout? The oblique muscles are two abdominal muscles that help to stabilize and rotate the torso. While often overlooked, they are essential for overall core strength and stability.
How to Create an Oblique Workout
A great way to strengthen your obliques is through specific exercises that target these muscles. This article will discuss why working out your obliques is essential and provide tips for starting an effective oblique workout routine.
The Benefits of Strengthening Your Obliques
The oblique muscles play a crucial role in providing stability and balance throughout the core musculature. They also help you maintain good posture when standing or sitting and performing physical activities. Additionally, strengthening your obliques can help reduce lower back pain by ensuring your core is strong enough to support your spine. Furthermore, working out these muscles can improve your range of motion, which can help you move more efficiently during physical activities such as running or lifting weights.
Tips for Getting Started With an Oblique Workout
Increasing intensity over time is essential when starting an oblique workout routine. Begin by performing simple exercises such as crunches, side bends, and plank variations with lighter or body weight only.
Selecting the Best Oblique Exercises
Once you have mastered the basic movements and built a base level of strength in the area, you can add more challenging exercises, such as medicine ball twists and mountain climbers. Additionally, stretch after each workout to prevent any potential soreness or stiffness in the following days. Here are some of the best exercises to perform for an oblique workout:
- Side Plank
- Russian Twists
- Situps to Twist
- Side Plank Dips
- Spiderman
- Trunk Rotations
- Wood Choppers
- Wall Balls
- Side Kicks
- Standing Side Crunch
The Volume Needed for an Oblique Workout
After selecting the exercises, you must choose the right volume to signal your body to increase strength and burn fat. Aim for 15 – AMRAP (as many reps as possible), 3 – 6 sets, and body weight. The exact amount of reps and sets will depend on your fitness level, goals, and experience. However, you will see results if you are around the range for the reps and sets as identified above.
Use Progressive Overload with an Oblique Workout
In addition to volume, using progressive overload and a periodization plan to start slow and build the perfect oblique workout for your fitness level and needs is crucial. Thus, aim for a 5 – 10% or 5 to 10 rep increase during each period of progressive overload. Once you master and complete the reps and sets, you are ready for a progressive overload.
Try a Periodization Plan With an Oblique Workout
A periodization plan uses three phases which begin with strength, progress to muscle building, and concludes with fat cutting. Most periodization plans spread your arm workouts over one year. How much time you spend in the strength, muscle-building, and fat-cutting phases depends on your fitness level, goals, and experience. Beginners can expect to spend 2 – 5 months in the strength-building phase depending on genetics and the intensity of workouts.
Oblique Workout Program
Next, you must add the oblique workout to another program, like the back. The oblique muscles are a small muscle group and should be performed with or after another workout. As a beginner, you can incorporate an oblique workout into a full-body or 5×5 workout. Intermediate and advanced bodybuilders can incorporate an oblique workout into post-exhaustion, pre-exhaustion, or german volume training.
Also, intermediate and advanced bodybuilders can use supersets and drop sets to get the most from their workouts. Beginners can’t do as much but don’t have to because almost anything they do will stimulate muscle growth. Also, the periodization plan will affect any workout while 5×5 builds strength, drop sets, and supersets will cut fat. Thus the phase of the periodization plan will determine the workout program used during a workout.
Conclusion on Oblique Workout
Working out your obliques is essential for solid core musculature and overall physical health. Not only does training these muscles help improve your posture and reduce lower back pain, but it can also improve your range of motion so that you move more efficiently during physical activities like running or lifting weights.
When starting with an oblique workout, take things slowly at first by performing basic exercises with lighter weights or body weight until you’ve built up a base level of strength in the area before progressing onto more challenging moves like medicine ball twists and mountain climbers.
Finally, if you are new to exercising or haven’t worked out in a while, be sure to talk to a doctor before beginning any new exercise program so that they can evaluate whether it is safe for you, given any pre-existing conditions or injuries may have.
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