Bicycle Crunches
The bicycle crunch is a crunch where you bring each elbow toward the opposite knee while your legs pedal in the air. It trains your abs and obliques together through spinal flexion and rotation. Pick it when you want rotation in your ab work. Slow, deliberate twists work better than fast pedalling.
Muscles worked
The bicycle crunches trains the abs and obliques.
Weekly sets for abs
Hard sets per week that Swole.fit plans for abs, counting every exercise that trains it. Start a cycle near the growth line and climb toward the recovery limit before a deload.
How to do the bicycle crunches
- 01Lie on your back with your hands lightly behind your head and your knees lifted above your hips.
- 02Curl your shoulder blades off the floor and press your lower back gently into it.
- 03Rotate your torso to bring one elbow toward the opposite knee as you extend the other leg out.
- 04Pause briefly in the twist, focusing on turning your ribs, not just your elbow.
- 05Switch sides in a slow pedalling motion, keeping your shoulders off the floor the whole set.
Coaching cues
- Shoulder to knee, not elbow
- Slow twist, brief pause
- Lower back stays down
Common mistakes
- Flapping your elbows while your torso stays still skips the oblique work; rotate your ribs and shoulder toward the knee.
- Pedalling fast just to count reps makes them sloppy; slow down and pause on each side.
- Letting your lower back arch as your leg extends loses core tension; extend the leg higher until your back stays down.
How Swole.fit programs it
Log it once and the app plans the next session for you.
- Most sets land between 8 and 15 reps, the range the plan steers isolation work toward for size.
- Week one starts around 2 to 3 reps in reserve. Each week you train a little closer to failure, ending around 0 to 1 in reserve before a deload week.
- Once the top of the range is easy, Swole.fit suggests a harder variation or added load.
- Sets for this exercise count toward your weekly volume for every muscle it trains: a full set for the primary muscles, half a set for the helpers.
The full method, with the maths, is in how mesocycles work.
Bicycle Crunches alternatives
Same muscles, different tool. Swap in one of these when the equipment is taken or your joints want a change.
Log it. Let the app plan the next one.
Track your bicycle crunches free. Swole.fit picks the next weight, counts your weekly sets and tells you when to deload.