Almost two months into the Major League Baseball season and Jason Kipnis of the Cleveland Indians seems almost like a different player.
Last year, Kipnis suffered an injury to his right oblique muscle and missed more than a month of the season. The injury led to Kipnis, who was coming off an All-Star season in 2013, to finish with a career-low .240 batting average as he struggled throughout the season to regain his form.
Now healthy, Kipnis is fourth in the American League in batting average at .337 and is once again playing like an All Star – in part because he is no longer bothered by his oblique muscle.
When we think of the abdominal muscles we often focus on those muscles in the front of our stomach area. We may imagine of that six-pack that we see on people in fitness magazines, a group of muscles known as the rectus abdominus.
But there is another area to the abs that can get neglected, and it’s our oblique muscles.
The oblique muscles run along the side of the waist and are important stabilizers in the trunk. The primary function of the oblique muscles is to rotate your trunk (torso). We have two sets of oblique muscles: right internal and external, and left internal and external. If you rotate to your left, your left external oblique and your right internal oblique are doing the work and vice versa.
While you may not be a professional baseball player, your obliques are engaged in almost every physical movement or activity you do, including resistance training, running, basketball, soccer, baseball, and so on.
If you want to strengthen your oblique muscles, the following are some exercises to add to your workout regiment:

Be sure that when you are performing any exercises that you keep your goal or sport in mind. To get the most out of your workout, you should always train with movements and exercises that mimic the activity or sport you are participating in.
To learn more about the functional training techniques we offer at AMP Fitness, contact us at 216-836-3674 or by email at info@ampfitness.com.
(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)
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