maratoolToe Touchers
How to do the toe touchers
- To begin, lie down on the floor or an exercise mat with your back pressed against the floor. Your arms should be lying across your sides with the palms facing down.
- Your legs should be touching each other. Slowly elevate your legs up in the air until they are almost perpendicular to the floor with a slight bend at the knees. Your feet should be parallel to the floor.
- Move your arms so that they are fully extended at a 45 degree angle from the floor. This is the starting position.
- While keeping your lower back pressed against the floor, slowly lift your torso and use your hands to try and touch your toes. Remember to exhale while perform this part of the exercise.
- Slowly begin to lower your torso and arms back down to the starting position while inhaling. Remember to keep your arms straight out pointing towards your toes.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Muscles worked
The muscles under tension are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.
A stretch loads them at the far end of the range they normally work in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Every exercise for:Abdominals
How this movement works
One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
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:
- Torso Rotationexercise ball
- Weighted Crunchesmedicine ball
- Ab Crunch Machinemachine
- Ab Rollout on Knees with Barbellbarbell
- Advanced Kettlebell Windmillkettlebell
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.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.