As we get into our 40s and beyond, many of us tend to become more pear shaped. Meaning, it looks like our chest may have fallen to our waist and our waist gets larger.

If you have followed MFA40 for any length of time, you will have learned that slimming the waist is more about what you eat and how you eat rather than solely doing some sort of exercise.

However, exercise is still important (as we have stated before). From our observation, when guys go to do ab exercises, the focus is often on the infamous and quite elusive “six pack” abs.

When doing so, guys forget or pay no attention to their obliques. These are the abdominal muscles on your sides (check out this image to better see and identify them > https://www.steroidslive.com/…/abdominal-obliques.jpg).

They work together with your lats (latissimus dorsi – side back muscles) to help you get that V shaped body.

A great oblique exercise is the Russian Twist. We like it so much, it is part of our EVOLUTION Program.

For those of you who have never heard of or performed them, here is how we do it:

  1. Sit on the floor like you are going to so a sit up
  2. Lean back as far as you are comfortable (keeping the back straight)
  3. Turn to the left as far as you can
  4. Turn to the right as far as you can

Going to the left, to the right and returning to center is 1 rep or repetition.

Once we became confident with this, we “kicked it up a notch”. We straightened our legs out in front of our bodies and slightly lifted our feet about 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7 cm) off of the ground.

This will work the lower abdominals and also really engage your core in order to stabilize the body so the legs do not swing while rotating from side to side.

Finally, kicking things into the highest gear, we grab medicine or weighted balls to use while performing our reps.

We hold the ball out in front of our bodies while keeping the elbows bent. As we got better, we could hold it out further. And when we rotated our torsos to the left and right, we did so by keeping both hands on the weighted ball and swinging it from one side to the other side (like we were going to place it on the floor next to us on the left and then the right).

But, we never place the ball on the ground and we never extend our arms out completely (it places undue pressure on the elbows).

So…if you are looking to add an exercise into your workout to help create that V shaped body, consider the Russian Twist and in time you may be able to progress all the way up to playing with big heavy balls.

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