What muscles do twisted sit-ups work?

The obliques do the turning, in diagonal pairs: rotating toward your left knee is the right external oblique working with the left internal oblique. Your abs handle the curl and your hip flexors bring your torso the rest of the way up. The obliques are the target and everything else is assisting.

Are twisted sit-ups good for love handles?

They train the muscles at your sides, which is not the same as removing what sits over them. When abdominal training was tested against a control group on a matched diet, endurance improved and body fat measures did not move. No exercise picks where fat goes.

Why do I feel twisted sit-ups in my lower back?

Sensation there is common and it is not evidence that your lower back is doing the turning, because it has very little turn available. The likelier explanation is that it is working to hold your position while your ribs and shoulders rotate above it. If something hurts and keeps hurting, that is a question for a physiotherapist.

How far should you twist?

Far enough that your chest changes the direction it points, and no further. If you are chasing a bigger arc you will get it from your arm swinging rather than from turning, and the arm is not the part you came to train.

Twisted sit-ups or bicycle crunches for obliques?

The bicycle keeps you off the floor and rotating without a break, so it is the longer continuous effort. The twisted sit-up covers more range and resets each rep, which makes it easier to check that the turn is real. Both work the same muscles in the same pairs.

Is twisting while you sit up bad for your back?

It is widely asserted and we could not find it measured for this exercise, so we are not going to tell you either way. What we can say is that speed and a snapped twist are the parts worth being conservative about, and that if this position is one your back already dislikes there are oblique exercises that never ask for it.

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Bodyweight · beginner · waist

Twisted sit-ups

Also called Oblique sit-up, Twisting sit-up, Cross-body sit-up, Elbow to opposite knee sit-up, Oblique crunch.

The short answer

A twisted sit-up curls you up off the floor and turns your ribcage across toward the opposite knee on the way. The demonstration turns from the ribs with the elbows left wide, and holds the shoulders clear of the floor between reps rather than setting them down. The turning is oblique work and it comes from a diagonal pair rather than one muscle: taking your right shoulder toward your left knee is the right external oblique working with the left internal oblique, because the external one turns you away from its own side and the internal one turns you toward it. What most people get wrong is where the turn is coming from. Almost none of it is available in your lower back.

How to do it

Step oneLie flat on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
Step twoPlace your hands behind your head with elbows pointing outward.
Step threeEngage your core and curl your torso upward, turning your ribcage toward your left knee as you rise and letting your right shoulder follow it across.
Step fourLower under control, then curl up again turning your ribcage the other way, toward your right knee.
Step fiveContinue alternating sides.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

Your elbow gets to your knee and your chest is still pointing at the ceiling.

WhyThe elbow can reach the knee without any turning happening at all, by dropping the shoulder and swinging the arm across. The catalog step names the elbow as the destination, which is a target rather than a description of what should be moving.

FixStart the rep by turning your ribcage toward the knee you are heading for, and let the elbow arrive wherever the ribs put it. Take the arms out of it entirely for a set, hands crossed on your chest, and you will feel how much smaller the movement gets.

One side of your neck is stiff the next morning and only one side.

WhyThe hand on the turning side is steering your head around before anything below it has moved, so the rep is being started at the neck by the arm that is supposed to be along for the ride.

FixLet your head stay in line with your ribs and go wherever they go. If your fingertips are behind your head, rest them there without hooking them, and check that both hands are doing the same nothing.

It feels like a normal sit-up with extra effort and nothing at the sides.

WhyThe elbow is traveling to the knee on its own side, so there is no rotation in the rep at all, only a sit-up done at an angle.

FixAim across your body every time, right shoulder to left knee and then left shoulder to right knee. The two knees alternate, which is easy to lose track of once the set gets uncomfortable.

The twist has turned into a flick at the top and the count is climbing fast.

WhyThe rotation is being added at the end, after the sit-up is already done, so it is a quick snap of the shoulders rather than a turn that runs through the whole rep. Speed hides it.

FixBegin turning as you leave the floor and arrive already turned, so the rotation and the curl finish together. It will cost you reps.

Twisted sit-up or bicycle crunch

These are the two exercises people mean when they say oblique work on the floor, and the difference is what happens between reps.

A bicycle keeps your shoulder blades off the floor from the first rep to the last and turns continuously from one side to the other, so nothing is ever set down. A twisted sit-up covers the whole range, up until the torso is near upright and back down again, and whether the shoulders touch the mat at the bottom is a choice.

That makes the bicycle a longer continuous effort at a shorter range, and the twisted sit-up a much bigger movement taken one rep at a time. Taking them one at a time is useful if you want to check that every turn is real, and the bicycle never letting up is why that set burns sooner.

Twisted sit-up or Russian twist

A Russian twist holds your trunk at one leaned-back angle and rotates from there, so the rotation is the whole exercise and nothing else changes. A twisted sit-up asks for the rotation and the full sit-up together.

That means they fail for different reasons. The Russian twist usually ends when the lean-back angle goes, and this one usually ends when the turn quietly drops out and you are just doing sit-ups.

If you want to feel what rotating actually feels like without a sit-up buried in it, the weighted Russian twist is the cleaner place to learn it.

Where the twist is really happening

It feels like your waist is turning. Most of the turn is happening above it.

Measurements of the lower back disagree with each other, and the disagreement is worth knowing about rather than hiding. Segment-by-segment studies find roughly 1 to 2 degrees of turn at each level of the lumbar spine, which adds to something under 10 degrees in total. A normative database of living people found a median of 7 degrees each way. Clinical measurement standards quote far higher figures for the region, 35 or 45 degrees, but those are taken standing with the pelvis free to move, so hip and upper back movement is inside the number.

Every one of those figures agrees on the thing that matters here: the lower back contributes a small share of what a twist feels like. The rotation you can actually produce lives higher up, in the ribcage and at the shoulder girdle, and that is why swinging an arm is such an easy substitute for turning.

Waist measurements do not respond to it. Six weeks of abdominal training against a control group on a matched diet moved endurance and left the fat over the muscles alone. Where you carry fat is not a decision the exercise underneath it gets to make.

What it is for

Twisted sit-ups are a bodyweight core exercise targeting the obliques, with the abs and hip flexors assisting. Adding a turn to the sit-up is what brings the obliques in, and the turn is produced by the ribcage rather than by an elbow reaching across.

Questions people ask

What muscles do twisted sit-ups work?: The obliques do the turning, in diagonal pairs: rotating toward your left knee is the right external oblique working with the left internal oblique. Your abs handle the curl and your hip flexors bring your torso the rest of the way up. The obliques are the target and everything else is assisting.
Are twisted sit-ups good for love handles?: They train the muscles at your sides, which is not the same as removing what sits over them. When abdominal training was tested against a control group on a matched diet, endurance improved and body fat measures did not move. No exercise picks where fat goes.
Why do I feel twisted sit-ups in my lower back?: Sensation there is common and it is not evidence that your lower back is doing the turning, because it has very little turn available. The likelier explanation is that it is working to hold your position while your ribs and shoulders rotate above it. If something hurts and keeps hurting, that is a question for a physiotherapist.
How far should you twist?: Far enough that your chest changes the direction it points, and no further. If you are chasing a bigger arc you will get it from your arm swinging rather than from turning, and the arm is not the part you came to train.
Twisted sit-ups or bicycle crunches for obliques?: The bicycle keeps you off the floor and rotating without a break, so it is the longer continuous effort. The twisted sit-up covers more range and resets each rep, which makes it easier to check that the turn is real. Both work the same muscles in the same pairs.
Is twisting while you sit up bad for your back?: It is widely asserted and we could not find it measured for this exercise, so we are not going to tell you either way. What we can say is that speed and a snapped twist are the parts worth being conservative about, and that if this position is one your back already dislikes there are oblique exercises that never ask for it.