While men strive for the perfect V-shape physique, women like to flaunt an hourglass look. Both shapes require a narrow waist, and men and women often focus on oblique exercises to decrease the midsection. If you've heard that oblique exercises could widen rather than reduce your waist size, relax. Although some logic exists in the argument that resistance training could bulk up your oblique muscles, evidence does not support such fears.
Combination Training
The obliques are diagonally arranged abdominal muscles on either side of the torso. What we know as love handles is nothing more than a layer of fat around the oblique muscles. A combination of cardio exercise and resistance training will help burn off fat and provide definition to your obliques. Sally Anderson, a fitness trainer who writes for the St. Petersburg Times, recommends that you burn more energy through activities such as running, walking, cycling and swimming and increase the strength of your oblique muscles through exercises such as an oblique crunch. These are similar to regular crunches, but you curl your upper body diagonally toward your knee. Anderson says that slow and proper execution of oblique exercises will yield better results than rapid movements.
Weight Training
Some trainers advocate adding weights to your oblique exercises. Nicola Oates, a fitness columnist for the South Wales Echo, suggests using a dumbbell while bending side to side from your waist, lifting the weight with your arm straight and moving only your upper body. Fears about oblique exercises widening your waist stem from the inclusion of weights in routines. Because obliques are muscles and weights add bulk to muscles, the argument suggests, using weights would add bulk to your waist. Your oblique muscles, however, are small and the risk of adding discernible bulk to them is remote, Oates says. She says the use of light weights will provide definition without widening your waist.
Genetics
If a dedicated regimen of cardio training and oblique exercises doesn't yield the waistline you covet, your ancestry rather than your workout efforts may be to blame. Your body shape, including the size of your waist, is largely determined by genetics. You can trim the fat from your waist and tone your abdominal muscles, including your obliques, without attaining the mid-section of your dreams. A gene called neurexin 3 plays a role in regulating your waist circumference.
Considerations
A thin waist is not necessarily a fit waist and a flab-free waist need not contain bulk. Rather than obsess about the exact measurement of your waistline, focus on a balance of proper nutrition, exercise and rest to attain a healthy and attractive body. You can improve the aesthetics of your body shape by adopting the principles of symmetry in weight training -- perform the same number of repetitions on each side of your body.
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