reckonerRussian twist
Sit back with your torso leaned off vertical, feet on the floor, hands together at your chest, and turn your ribcage from one side to the other. Done well it is a small, slow rotation that works the obliques and the abs. Done badly it is an arm swing over a rounded back, which is what most people picture.
Back long, turn from the ribs, feet down.
- Pattern
- Core flexion
- Trains
- Obliques, abs
- Kit
- Bodyweight, floor
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Lower back
Muscles worked
How to do it
Sit, then lean back until your abs take the weight
Sit on the floor with your knees bent and your heels down. Lean back until your torso is about halfway between upright and lying down, the point where your abs have to hold you there. Hold your hands together at your chest.
Make the back long
Lift your chest and keep the spine long from your tailbone to the back of your head. A flat or slightly tall back is the goal. A rounded one means you leaned back further than you can hold.
Turn from the ribs
Rotate your ribcage and shoulders together toward one side, keeping your hips still. Your hands travel because your ribs turned, so go only as far as the ribs go. Your eyes follow your hands and your neck stays relaxed.
Come back through the middle and turn the other way
Turn back past the center and go to the other side at the same pace. Keep breathing. Slower is harder and better.
End the set when the back gives in
The set is over when your lower back starts to round, your feet slide, or your arms begin to do the turning. Stop there, whatever the count says. Keep your feet down until this feels easy, and only then try them raised, which asks you to hold the lean without the floor's help.
What goes wrong
Swinging the arms
The hands whip from side to side and the ribcage hardly moves. It looks busy and it feels like a lot of rotation, and the obliques are barely asked for anything. If your shoulders stay facing forward, only your arms turned.
Slumping into a C
As the set gets harder the back rounds and the chest sinks toward the hips. It is the body finding an easier way to stay up, and it takes the work away from the turn and hands it to simply hanging on.
Raising the feet before you can control the turn
Feet off the floor looks like the real version and it is a harder one. You are holding the lean and the turn at once, and the first thing to go is the long back. Earn it with the feet down.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 10 | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 11 | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 12 | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 13 | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 14 | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 14 | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Why does Reckoner not give me the Russian twist as a beginner?
A beginner's core first has to learn to hold the spine still while something pulls on it, which is what the Pallof press, the plank and the dead bug teach. The twist trains turning and bending instead, and its form falls apart easily when you are tired or the load rises. So Reckoner does not offer it to beginners. It can offer it to intermediate and advanced athletes, once holding still is already something you can do.
Is the Russian twist bad for your back?
Form is the worry here, more than the movement. A back that rounds and a trunk that is hanging on rather than turning are what cost you. This page has no measurement of the Russian twist itself to point to, and it will not make one up. If you have told Reckoner your lower back is a problem, it will not offer you this exercise at all.
Should I hold a weight when I do it?
Not until the bodyweight version is slow, with a long back and a turn that comes from the ribs. Reckoner prescribes it with no added load, so the way to make it harder is a slower turn, a longer set or the feet raised, rather than reaching for a plate.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. Each of them has a page.