Cross Body Crunch

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ Body onlyBeginnerCompound

How to do the cross body crunch

  1. Lie on your back and bring your knees up to a 60 degree angle, keep your feet flat on the floor.
  2. Place your hands on either side of your head (over your ears).
  3. Curl up raising your right elbow and your left knee so that they touch over your chest.
  4. Return to the starting position and repeat with alternate arms and legs.
  5. Note: Contract your abs as you twist during this exercise.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Every exercise for:Abdominals

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.

Every exercise using:Body only

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.