Seated Barbell Twist
Trains the Abs and Obliques.
- Equipment
- A barbell and either a flat bench or an adjustable bench
- Mechanic
- Isolation
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Sit on the end of a flat bench with your feet flat and wide for a stable base.
- Rest a light barbell across your upper back as for a squat, hands wide.
- Sit tall with your chest up and your stomach braced.
- Rotate the trunk to turn the bar to one side as far as it comfortably goes.
- Rotate back through the middle to the other side.
- Keep the hips still — the turn comes from the trunk.
Common mistakes
- Loading the bar. An empty bar is a long lever across the shoulders, and adding plates multiplies a rotational load the spine has little to gain from.
- Twisting fast. Momentum at the ends of the range is where a rotation stops being controlled, and the ends are where the spine is least supported.
- Letting the hips swivel with the bar. The hips are the anchor; if they turn, the trunk has not.
- Treating it as an oblique exercise with a load. Loaded rotation is trained better by cable chops and Pallof presses, where the resistance line is horizontal and the spine is not carrying a bar.