Exercise library

How to do the Alternate Heel Touchers

A beginner isolation exercise using bodyweight, working the abdominals.

Primary musclesAbdominals
Secondary musclesNone recorded
EquipmentBodyweight
LevelBeginner
TypeIsolation
ForcePull

Steps

  1. Lie on the floor with the knees bent and the feet on the floor around 18-24 inches apart. Your arms should be extended by your side. This will be your starting position.
  2. Crunch over your torso forward and up about 3-4 inches to the right side and touch your right heel as you hold the contraction for a second. Exhale while performing this movement.
  3. Now go back slowly to the starting position as you inhale.
  4. Now crunch over your torso forward and up around 3-4 inches to the left side and touch your left heel as you hold the contraction for a second. Exhale while performing this movement and then go back to the starting position as you inhale. Now that both heels have been touched, that is considered 1 repetition.
  5. Continue alternating sides in this manner until all prescribed repetitions are done.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the alternate heel touchers to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.

Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.

Where the instructions come from

The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.