Standing lateral crunch

Technique of the exercise:

You are standing in a stable position (back straight, feet shoulder-width apart) with a dumbbell in one hand. Consider pulling in your stomach (sucking in the navel from the inside). In this setup, inhale, tilt your torso sideways to the opposite side where the dumbbell is, and exhale on the return phase. The other hand can be placed behind the head.

Don’t try to go beyond the natural range of your joints.

Muscles worked:

Main: abdominals (obliques)
Secondary: deep back muscles, transverse

By performing only a lateral tilt, only the obliques among the abdominal muscles participate in the movement.

Interest of lateral flexions with dumbbell

This is quite a risky exercise. Using a heavy dumbbell unilaterally can put the back in a relatively precarious position during side tilt.

Nevertheless, it remains relatively used in physical preparation. Forget it if your goal is aesthetic, especially as a heavy load will risk inducing a bottle effect (visually) due to the enlargement of your obliques which are the base of the small muscles.

Variants of Standing lateral crunch

The exercise can be performed on the low pulley by holding a handle instead of a dumbbell:

Danger / contraindication to Standing lateral crunch

As mentioned above, you will have to be very careful.

Your back may not like tilting with a heavy load one-sided at all.