Alternate Heel Touchers
Lying on your back with knees bent, you crunch a few inches to one side and tap your heel with your fingertips, then the other. The range is deliberately tiny — 8 to 10 cm of lateral flexion — which makes it one of the few oblique drills that almost nobody can do wrong once the shoulders stay off the floor.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Lie flat with your knees bent and heels roughly 45-60 cm apart — close enough that your fingertips can reach them without shifting your torso.
- Set your heels near enough to your hips that you can just brush them; too far away and you will start sliding your shoulders instead of bending.
- Lay your arms flat alongside your body, palms down, fingers pointing at your feet.
- Lift your head and shoulder blades a few centimetres off the floor and hold that height for the entire set.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Exhale as you bend and touch, inhale on the way back to centre. Roughly one second to each side, one second held, one second back.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Bodyweight only, and there is no sensible way to load it — holding a plate changes the movement rather than progressing it. Progress by adding the one-second hold, then by slowing the return, then by moving to a loaded oblique movement once 25 controlled reps per side feels routine.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Hold the shoulder blades off the ground from the first rep to the last. If you cannot, cut the set short — that is the honest rep count.
Anchor your hips to the floor and think of pulling your ribs down toward your hip bone on that side. The shoulder should drop, not travel.
Walk your heels closer until the fingertips reach with a small side bend. The heel is a target, not a goal — move it to fit the movement.
One second down, one second held, one second back. Twelve honest reps per side beat forty fast ones, and the burn arrives anyway.
Why bother
The obliques do two jobs: they rotate the torso and they side-bend it. This drill trains the side-bend half with a range so short that momentum has nothing to work with. You are not trying to reach the heel; you are trying to shorten one side of your waist against the resistance of your own upper body.
The catch is that it is a very small movement with no external load, so its ceiling is low. Once you can do 25 slow reps per side without your shoulders touching down, adding more reps buys you almost nothing. That is a reason to use it early in a training career or as a finisher, not as your only oblique work.
Where it fits
At the end of an ab block, after the heavier flexion or anti-extension work, two or three times a week. It pairs naturally with a rotational movement such as a cable twist, because rotation and lateral flexion are different jobs and this one only covers the second.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
Start here instead
When this gets easy
Asked and answered
Do heel touches actually do anything, or are they a warm-up?
They do genuine work on the obliques, but only in a narrow band of difficulty. For a beginner or as a finisher after harder ab work, they are worth the two minutes. For anyone who can already hang and raise their legs, they are close to a warm-up. Judge by whether your side is burning at rep 12, not rep 40.
Will these give me a smaller waist?
No. Training the obliques builds the muscle underneath; it does not remove the fat over it and it does not cinch anything in. If anything, heavy loaded oblique work over years slightly thickens the waist. Heel touches are far too light to move that needle in either direction.
Why do my neck and shoulders ache instead of my abs?
Because you are holding the head up with the neck flexors rather than curling from the ribs, and the shoulders creep up around the ears. Tuck the chin slightly, keep a fist-sized gap under it, and press the shoulders down away from your ears while you hold the curled position.
How is this different from a Russian twist?
A Russian twist rotates the spine; heel touches side-bend it. The obliques do both, and being decent at one does not make you decent at the other. Run them on the same day if you want the obliques covered properly, or alternate them week to week.