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The obliques,
located at the side of the torso, are primarily stabilizers. There
aren't a lot of oblique exercise or movements you do in the gym or in
daily life that call for a lot of bending from side to side. Therefore,
the obliques (like the stabilizer muscles of the lower back) tire fairly
quickly from a lot of full-range exercises and are relatively slow to
recover.
There was a
time when bodybuilders did a lot of oblique exercises, some of them
using substantial amounts of weight. You rarely see successful
bodybuilders doing those exercises today because the obliques, like any
other muscles, get bigger when you train them with weight, and massive
obliques tend to make the waist thicker and take away from the
aesthetics of an outstanding V taper.
Of course,
the obliques get an isometric workout whenever you do heavy training
such as squats or shoulder presses, but since they are only acting as
stabilizers and not working through a full range of motion these
exercises usually don't cause them to grow the degree that you'd get
from doing side bends, for example, holding on to heavy dumbbells. So
bodybuilders who train obliques at all tend to stick to nonresistance
movements, such as twists or side bends, using no weight, which tighten
the muscles without causing them to become too big.
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