I see so many people doing Bicycle Crunches
and Russian Twists for their obliques, but guess what? They're not doing
anything for your obliques.
What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com.
So, if you hate love handles as much as I do, then today this video is going to be exactly
what you're looking for, because I'm going to show you what to do finally to get rid of
them once and for all. Now, let's face it, love handles are stubborn. As a matter of fact,
only second to the low back fat it's the area on your body that you just can't seem to get rid
of no matter what you do, unless you're doing the right things. So that being said, guys,
I want to show you five things that you can either stop doing because they're not helping you
or start doing because they will right now.
So, let's start right off the bat where we need
to. And that is any time you want to lose fat anywhere on your body, not just on your love
handles, you got to start the discussion with what you're putting in your mouth. Your nutrition
matters. And notice I didn't say diet because I'm not a fan of diets, diets or something temporary
that you're on for a period of time, that you're eventually going to be off. Nutrition is
how you feed your body over the long haul. But even if you are on a diet plan, "following"
the diet is not enough. Because if you think that just by following the rules of the diet plan,
let's say Keto or you're following a vegetarian diet. Or let's say the different ways of eating
and strategies like intermittent fasting, you might be abiding by that time
frame within which you're eating.
However, if you're eating too many calories more
than your body is burning off, you are not going to burn fat. So, following the diet rules might
mislead you into thinking that you're doing something right. It's got to be more than that.
In every instance you've got to be hypocaloric, you're got to be burning more calories than you're
taking in if you want to get rid of that fat.
Point number two also relates to nutrition,
but it ties into that deposition of fat and that preferential deposition of fat that doesn't
necessarily work in our favor. You see, we might want to get rid of that fat over the lower abdomen
and the love handles and maybe over that low back, which I actually happen to still have here
myself, even at very lean levels of body fat. But remember, we don't get to choose as because
the body stores fat in a very particular way, particularly in men. You start losing it first
here in your face and in your neck. And the last place to come off is down the abdomen and
around the love handles and the waist. So, what we do is we got to persist with that nutrition
plan, even if you're doing everything right.
Take a look at this guy. He's one of our
guys that followed our Athlean-X programs. He started at this level right here. Clearly had
a lot to lose. His initial results look like this. Now if you notice, the body fat loss occurred
easily in the face and in the neck. And while he lost a significant amount around the abdomen,
kind of lost that beer belly, he still retained some fat there in the oblique and then that lower
ab area, I'm sure, around the low back. However, if he were to give up at this point because
he figured, you know, was just not in the cards for me, I'm never going to be really
ripped, he would have been mistaken.
You have to persist and go through that, knowing
that this is the pattern that we lose fat, particularly in men, like I said. So,
he persisted, and this is what happened. You can see here now that he got rid of that,
what was once thought to be never going away, that fat around the obliques. And now he's got
that lean waistline and the same thing will happen to you. But the point is, you just can't give up
too early, persist on this path and I promise you, it's just that it will go away
just a little bit more slowly.
Reason number three of why you still can't get rid
of those love handles is because you're training just your abs. I understand that when we develop
a muscle, the appearance of it is going to look better. However, if it's covered in fat, you're
not going to see the results of your hard work. Well, if you're doing the first two things I
told you, you're going to start to see what's underneath and that's where the rubber hits the
road. Are you actually showing off any muscle because you've taken the time to develop the
right ones? And anybody that's told you to avoid training the obliques, has given you wrong
information. The obliques, when trained, are going to give you the appearance that you're looking
for. The idea here, though, is to not do just ab exercises because there's a big difference.
Ab exercises are like this, traditional crunches, sagittal plane moves, sit ups, anything that sort
of just trains you in that straight forward and back, as I said, sagittal plane. But the obliques
are designed for rotation, so you want to make sure that you're performing rotational exercises
from the bottom up where you're rotating your legs in space and from the top down, we were rotating
your upper body in space. Weight these exercises too when you can. Utilize a hanging bar so
that you're using the weight of your legs to create an overload. Once the obliques are
developed like any other muscle, they're going to look better and show better, especially
once that body fat level comes down.
Whenever four is probably the biggest mistake
people make when they're trying to get obliques, because, again, you think you're doing the
right things, but you're not doing it correctly. And that is you might have said at the last
point, Jeff, I do so much rotational work, there's no way I'm not training my obliques
effectively. Well, maybe not. Because you do an exercise like this, the Bicycle Crunch, or if
you do an exercise like this, the Russian Twist, guess what? These aren't training your obliques.
Why? Because you're not rotating. See, it looks like you're rotating because you're tapping
your hands left and right or because you're having your elbows touch opposite knees.
But if you're just flipping your elbows or flapping your hands, you're not rotating.
In order to train the obliques properly, you have to make sure that you're actually
creating rotation. So, what I like to do is give this tip: If you're going to do
that Bicycle Crunch, you set your elbows up in that position slightly in front of your
body. Once they're set, you don't move them. What you do is you move your torso, so you
twist to get your elbow to meet your knee, and then you twist your whole body to get
your other elbow to the opposite knee. You don't just flip the elbows across the body giving
the impression that you're turning because you're not you're not working your obliques maximally.
Same thing when we talk about the Russian Twist, don't just touch down to the sides, moving
your hands across your body. Keep your hands in a fixed place right in front of your torso and
rotate your entire upper body down to the side so that you're getting true rotation.
It seems like a small point here, guys, but it holds all the difference in
in whether or not these exercises give you the benefits that you thought you were getting
when you were doing them in the first place.
And step number five relates to an exercise
you probably long ago stop doing or maybe you never did it in your life and you maybe should
consider doing it again. It's called the Stick Twist or the Broomstick Twist. And what I like
about this is it reinforces everything we just talked about in the last point, and that is
it fixes your body in space and then allows you to rotate from there without getting that
flipping of the elbows across your body. So, you sit back on a bench with anything behind your
back here, a broomstick, like I said, any type of dowel. If you want to go even more challenging,
you can put a barbell back there to create that opportunity for a weighted exercise.
But what we do is we lock our elbows in place, sit back to get that posterior tilt and actually
a little bit of resistance against the abdominal obliques into flexion. And then we go and
we just drive our elbow across our body with the rotation of the torso. The torso and
the bar are moving as one and we drive across. Here's where the deal is, though, guys, you try
to get an intense contraction of the obliques on every single repetition. Stop counting.
It doesn't matter. Instead of counting reps, make those reps count. Rotate to the left and
drive that tight contraction of the right oblique. Rotate to the right and drive that tight
contraction of the left oblique.
Every single repetition here
should be focused on the quality, not the quantity. And when you do this, guys,
if you've never done this exercise before, the results that will await you in terms of
deepening those obliques will be mind blowing. So, guys, I get it. There's nothing to love about
love handles, but there's a path to getting rid of them. If you're persistent and with these steps
here in this video, guys, I promise you the results will be there if you put in the work.
If you're looking for a plan that maps it all out step by step, you can get them all over at
Athleanx.com. We include a meal plan that makes the nutrition portion of this step by step
and very easy to follow. They're all available guys at Athleanx.com. If you found the video
helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know what you want me
to cover, I'll do my best to do that for you. If you haven't already done so guys, make sure
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put one out. All right guys see you soon.
