Superman Abs... Awesome Bodyweight Exercise For The Obliques!

Superman Pushups and the Superman Plank that I showed you how to do in a recent blog post are powerful abdomial muscle builders. The only problem is that they don't focus on your oblique muscles.

The obliques are the abdominal muscles on the side of your stomach area. This is where many people develop those fat-laden love handles. You need to balance your abdominal muscle development otherwise this could eventually lead having back pain.

Doing this exercise will quickly strengthen your obliques. It's a really powerful exercise. Do three sets of these and you'll have gotten a tremendous obliques workout.

Superman Obliques Exercise

1. Starting Position:

Lay down on your right side. Set yourself up so that your right elbow, forearm and hand or on the ground and supporting your upper body. Your elbow should be directly underneath your shoulder. You can use your left hand for stability when getting yourself on to your elbow position.

Your right foot should be on the floor and your left foot should be resting on top of your right foot. Next, slide the left foot in back of the right foot just enough so that it reaches the ground. By having two feet on the ground (sideways) you'll have greater stability and be able to do something really neat to increase the intensity of this exercise.

2. Lift Up Into The Exercise Position:

Put your left hand again at your side and in front of you. Put it somewhere near your abdominal muscles and maybe 6 inches to a foot or so away from your body. It's just there to help stabilize your body as you put your body into the air with your right hand. I'll explain that next.

Now lift your right elbow off the ground (remember you are using your left hand now to support your weight while you do this) and support your body with your right hand. Your hand should be a little in front of where your elbow was resting on the ground.

In fact, the further you put your hand away from your body, the more difficult this obliques exercise becomes. As you get stronger, you can experiment with putting your hands further away from your body.

What you want to do is lift your body into a triangle kind of position. You want your legs and upper body stiff and in a straight line. Your hand and your feet turned sideways, support all of your weight. The ground would make the third line of the triangle.

The fingers on your right hand should be pointing away from your body for better stability. Remember if you want a greater workout to put your right hand further away from your body.

3. What's Next?

Now hold your body in this position for as long as you can. You should be able to feel the strain in your obliques. If not then move your right hand further away from your head.

See if you can hold it for 30 seconds. Then the next time increase the difficulty so you can't hold it for 30 seconds yet.

4. Extra Training Effects:

There are at least two extra things you can do while holding your triangular position. One is to rotate your upper body left and right. By doing this you'll get an even better obliques workout. You'll feel it working a larger portion of the obliques. And it feels really good twisting from side to side like this.

Another thing you can do to increase the intensity of the exercise is to let your hips dip toward the ground and then lift back up into a straight body alignment. Do this several times.

And to make it even more difficult, try dipping your right hand down while at the same time dipping your hips. This in essence would be a Superman Obliques Pushup.

5. Repeat Above Instructions On Your Left Side

There you have it, another super powerful muscle building exercise that you can do with your bodyweight alone. No equipment is necessary. You can do this anywhere you have floor space.

Also keep in mind that you aren't only exercising your obliques here. There are many other stabilizing muscles that are involved in this exercises. This is another multi-muscle kind of exercise, it's just that this exercise focuses more strongly on your oblique muscles.

Screw wasting time and going to a gym, your body is the gym. Workout at home, in the park and while traveling and always get a super workout.

To Your Radiant Health, Happiness, Fitness and Freedom, Roger Haeske