The oblique muscles are the muscles located at the sides of our stomach. These muscles influence a lot on what is commonly called the ‘Love handles’. By exercising your oblique muscles you’ll have a toned, firm looking stomach -from all angles.

Remember that they key to a great looking stomach is dropping your whole body fat levels, and exercising your stomach’s muscles - all of them. Follow these tips to get the most out of your oblique exercises:

- Warm up and stretch. Many people neglect this step, however it can mean the difference between results and injuries.

- Quality over quantity. What good is in making 1000 reps of badly performed exercises? When you do your oblique exercises, perform them slowly and with control. The key here is form, and form is success.

- Focus on your obliques. Don’t use the neck or back on the movements. Doing that will take 90% of the power on exercises and will probably lead you to injury. Focus on your muscles, make’em work!

- Keep your chin up. This tip is relates to the previous one. Keeping your chin up will prevent you from putting strain on the neck.

- Know that there’s no such thing as ’spot toning’. That’s right, you can’t lose fat on just one spot. Your body is a whole, treat it like that. You should start changing your diet and engaging into cardio workouts beside your abs routine.

- Keep your spine neutral. Don’t arch or flatten the back. It is safest to keep a small distance of about an inch and a half between your back and the floor, which varies slightly depending on what you feel.

Additional Oblique Exercises Ways:
# Bicycle Kick. Lie flat on the floor on a comfortable exercise mat with your lower back pressed to the ground. Put your hands besides your head, with your elbows facing straight out–not forward towards your feet. Keep your chin off of your chest. Bring up both of your knees up to about a 45 degree angle and slowly touch your right elbow to your left knee, followed by your left elbow to your right knee. You don’t need to actually touch the elbow to the knee, but get as close as you comfortably can reach. This exercise should be done in a slow, deliberate manner. Start out doing 3 sets of 10 repetitions.
# Oblique Crunch. Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Now slowly drop both knees to the left so the left leg is resting on the floor, with the right leg on top of the left. Place your hands back by your ears with your elbows pointing straight out–parallel to the floor. Now lift your shoulders off the floor for a count of three, and then return to the starting position. Start out with 3 sets of 10 on each side of your body. An advanced version of this exercise is to take a 10 pound weight plate from a barbell set and hold the plate on your chest as you do the exercise.
# Side Bends. Stand up with a 10 pound dumbbell (or whatever weight feels manageable) in each hand, with your knees slightly bent. Slowly bend over to your right side, lowering the dumbbell as far as you can, and then return to the starting position. Do 1 set of 15 reps on the right side, pause for a moment, and then do 15 reps on the left side. Start out with 3 sets of 15 reps on each side.