Lose the Love Handles
Woodchopper Full Body Exercise

Rotational exercises are some of the best exercises to do to lose those love handles or the pear shape around one’s midsection – the stubborn fat around one’s waist. In order to lose the fat around the waist, most importantly you must eat healthy foods. You can exercise all you want but if you consume more calories than you burn, binge eat and eat the wrong types of foods, it won’t make a real difference!

One rotational exercise that is also a full-body exercise is the woodchopper exercise. This can be done anywhere and all you need is a dumbbell or a free weight like the one I am using in my demonstration video. You can also use resistance bands and even a kettlebell. The method of performance for the type of weight you use is the same. It focuses on your obliques and abs, but it also works your legs, glutes and lats. It’s a good combination exercise especially when you want to do a quick workout.

Method of Performance

• Grab a free weight (like I have in the video below) or a dumbbell or resistance bands. With resistance bands, you will have to tie it to a pole or cable pulley machine.
• Keep your legs apart with your knees bent over you feet (knees shouldn’t be pointing inwards or outwards because you will injure your knees in the long-run).
• Hold the weights on your right side with both hands in the bent position – your starting position.
• As you un-bend you knees (legs straighten out) you will move the weight with both hands upwards twisting your midsection and pivoting on the right leg. Also breathe out as you do so. This is the top of the movement and the motion of this exercise is basically a diagonal upward movement.
• From the top of the movement, bring the weight back down (breathing in as you do so) and using the same movement but downwards this time.
• Repeat the same movement on the left hand side.
• Do about 3-4 sets of 12-16 reps with a weight you feel that is appropriate.

Variation of This Exercise

You can also do this exercise using a pulley machine and a rope or handle. The movement is the same except that you would have to attach the rope to the pulley machine at the mid-way point. The movement would now be horizontal rather than diagonal.

Here is my video of how this exercise is done: