Windshield Wiper Exercise for Super Roller Skate Flow

Geplaatst op 23-09-2025

SUPINE WINDSHIELD FLOOR WIPERS

for Super Rhythm Roller Skate Flow.

An Exercise in Stability, Control, and Real-Life Power.

By Brian B. Kanhai, Soulful Fitness Roller Skate Training.

Picture this: you’re lying in supine position on the floor, arms stretched wide and anchored by heavy dumbbells so your arms, shoulders and upper body stay grounded. Your legs rise up like a lever and swing slowly from side to side, like windshield wipers on a car window clearing the rain. 

Not exactly rocket science, with a pretty straight forward execution plan. When you're new to this exercise, check how many repetitions you can do with proper form and build your sets from there. Beneath the surface of this simple looking exercise, there is a bundled powerhouse of neuromuscular activity, core engagement, and stability training.

Let’s break it down.

Muscles Involved and Their Roles.

Although the windshield wiper has some variations in execution, all generally known as core & ab strengthening moves, this exercise is not just about abs; it’s a full orchestra of muscles working together to stabilize, resist, and control movement.

1. Stabilizing the core happens indeed by all the abdominal muscles.

The rectus abdominis (aka the “six-pack” muscles) group controls the lifting and lowering of the legs and helps to keep the spine from overarching.

The internal and external obliques are the headliners of the show here, creating and resisting rotation. They act like brakes, keeping the legs from pulling you out of alignment with every swing.

Then there is the transversus abdominis, the deep corset-like muscle that stabilizes the trunk and keeps intra-abdominal pressure steady.

2. The hip flexors and psoas major also take a major part of responsibility for lifting the legs and controlling their side-to-side movement.

The psoas also connects the spine to the femur, linking lower and upper body control.

3. Lats (Latissimus Dorsi)

With your arms straightened and locked down by dumbbells, the lats stabilize the upper body and resist counter-rotation. They essentially “pin” your torso against the floor, adding an anchor point.

4. Pectoralis Major and Minor

Work with the lats and shoulders to lock down your arms and prevent rolling of the torso.

5. Spinal Stabilizers Erector Spinae & Multifidus.

These fine-tune spinal alignment, ensuring that the movement is controlled rather than jerky and clunky.

The Neuromuscular Meaning.

This exercise is a controlled battle between movement and resistance.

The legs create a force on the way down. The core and upper body resist that force to prevent unwanted rotation.

This is classic anti-rotation training, which is a crucial neuromuscular demand in 3-fold:

• Motor control.

Your nervous system recruits the right muscles at the right time.

• Proprioception.

Your body senses where it is in space and adjusts.

• Reflexive stability.

Deep stabilizers kick in automatically to keep you safe.

Benefits and Daily Life Translation.

In today's world, that increasingly demands fast results and instant gratification, this old-school exercise has some serious effects and immediate results. That is, after the initial delayed onset muscle soreness has been experienced in the first few weeks of incorporating this exercise to your training regimen.

What you can definitely count on is:

1. Stability in Motion.

Carrying groceries, twisting to grab something from the back seat, or reaching overhead while holding a bag, all require resisting rotation, just like in this exercise.

2. Improved Reflexes and Balance.

By swinging the legs side to side, you challenge your reflexive core engagement, similar to catching yourself when you slip or making quick adjustments in sports.

3. Better Postural Control.

Your deep stabilizers and obliques learn to support the spine under dynamic load, reducing risk of back pain especially in the lower spine area.

4. Enhanced Athleticism and (grand)parenting.

Athletes from roller skaters to swimmers to tennis players rely on core-driven counter-rotation. Stronger obliques and stabilizers mean sharper turns, more powerful swings, quicker recovery and superfast decision-making to act.

Picking up your toddler in various inconvenient angles and engaging into playground sessions with fast and unpredictable actions, require insane reflexes and core strength. Good parenting means staying in shape. Salute to all the grandparents muscling up for their offspring.

5. Functional Neuromuscular Adaptation.

Improvement in this exercise means your nervous system and muscles communicate more efficiently. This translates into less wasted energy, smoother movements, and a more resilient body.

Variations of wipes.

In supine position, keeping the knees bent throughout the side-to-side swipes is a more gentle intermediate level of the floor wiper.

When hanging from a pull-up bar, windshield wipers can be performed with either the knees tucked in or keeping the legs up and as straight as possible, with the feet pointing to the ceiling.

Tucking the knees in or lifting straight legs up, are both nice introductory exercises before entering the windshield domain.

How about holding up a barbell as you lay in supine position, preferably loaded, so you have counterbalance literally weighing you down as you swing your legs from side to side.

Pronated floor wipers involve different muscle groups, stabilizing the upper body, making it possible for the core muscles to perform the lateral wipe movement.

Because of the pronated body position, the triceps brachii and deltoids are heavily loaded, but other parts of the posterior chain get involved as well, such as the glutes, hamstrings and even the calf muscles, giving you even more bounce for the ounce you put in!

The Takeaway.

The windshield wiper exercise isn’t just a flashy core move. It’s a neuromuscular training tool that builds stability, anti-rotation strength, and real-world control. By engaging everything from your lats to your psoas, you’re teaching your body to work as a system, not in isolation.

With every wipe, you swipe away possible postural and locomotive insecurities that may trigger you to move less or perhaps not challenge yourself at all.

Funky note: The harder you try to keep your upper body “locked,” the smarter and quicker your nervous system becomes at resisting instability. It’s not just muscles growing stronger, it’s your body and brain becoming a super team. Adding rhythm and groove to your practice, instantly engages the soul into the mix. One plus one, plus one more, becomes the Oneness of You.

The Link to Roller Skating.

The specific biomechanics of all different wipe variations, has close resemblance to biomechanical behavior on roller skates. Improving your wipes has direct positive effects on having absolute locomotive control and postural stability in a stationary situation.

From there, it's massive gains in Crazy Legs, Grapevine variations, upright spins, sit-spins, Downtowns, Uptowns, Pendulum Swings, Compass turns and much more.

Controlling unwanted upper body rotations and initiating kinetic chains become ridiculously effortless when having just moderate proficiency. Can you imagine what happens when you stick through and go totally wipogalactic?

Committing yourself to gain superior wipe mode, is a real booster to develop fluent roller skating skills and directly affects overall quality of life, as you'll develop a straight spine that can handle the sometimes heavy loads and burdens life puts on you.

So, next time you’re lying on the floor sweeping your legs side to side, know that you’re not just working your abs; you’re rewiring your neuromuscular system for fluent daily life mastery, on and off wheels.

Key Research & Studies.

Listed here are several peer-reviewed studies & scientific sources that are relevant and related to the core / anti-rotation / hip flexor / stability work (like leg lowering, active straight leg raise, resisting rotation, etc.).

Some map more directly to the “windshield wipers” exercise; others are more about components (psoas, obliques, core stabilizers, pelvic rotation) but still highly applicable.

Additional Relevant Studies with Summaries.

1       Abdominal muscle activation: An EMG study of the Sahrmann five-level core stability test (Hong Kong Physiotherapy Journal, 2020) Healthy adults, performing Sahrmann 5-level core stability tests (leg raise, lowering etc.) Showed that abdominal muscle activity (Rectus Abdominis, External Oblique, TrA/Internal Oblique) increases as the difficulty increases; especially when heels aren’t touching the ground. That’s analogous to keeping legs elevated and moving (as in windshield wipers). Improves “anti-extension / anti-lowering” control. DOI: 10.1142/S1013702520500080

2       Electromyographic analysis of traditional and nontraditional abdominal exercises: implications for rehabilitation and training (2006)   Healthy men & women (23-43 yrs), performing exercises like power wheel (roll-out), hanging knee-ups, reverse crunches, etc. Found that “nontraditional” or advanced movements (those that require more control over hip flexion and spine positioning) produce high activity in upper & lower rectus abdominis, internal oblique, and even latissimus dorsi. While windshield wipers weren’t tested directly, the pattern supports that similar challenging core/hip combos recruit broadly.    PubMed ID: 16649890

3        Core muscle activity in a series of balance exercises with different stability conditions (2015)     44 healthy subjects → core muscle EMG during balance exercises; stable vs unstable surfaces, plus elastic resistance.  Shows that instability and resisting movement (in various postures) significantly increase core muscles activation (especially erector spinae, multifidus, etc.). Relevance: resisting rotation or unintended motion (like being anchored by weights) is similar in principle. PubMed ID: 26047757

4       Not only static: Stabilization manoeuvres in dynamic exercises – A pilot study (2018) Young adults, static & dynamic trunk-strengthening exercises; comparing abdominal bracing vs hollowing etc.       Dynamic exercises (e.g. curl-ups) with bracing produce higher activation in rectus abdominis, external oblique; hollowing tends to favor deeper muscles. Suggests for windshield wipers that having rigid torso (braced) likely increases superficial + deep core activation. PubMed ID: 30089127

5       Stabilization exercises in four-point kneeling (2006)         Healthy volunteers, trunk & hip muscles measured during four-point kneeling & contralateral arm/leg lifts         Found that internal and external obliques, lumbar multifidus, etc., have high activity when limbs move and spine must remain stable. Although this is a different posture, the “resist motion while part of the body moves” is analogous to your legs swinging while arms and upper trunk are anchored.   PubMed ID: 16896840

6       Core stability muscle activity during standing lower body twisting exercises (2020)       Young active adults, performing lower body twisting in standing positions at different speeds and with different leg positions. EMG of External Oblique, Internal Oblique, Lumbar Multifidus etc.         The more extended (straight-leg) lower body positions increased oblique activity; speed also increased activation. Relevance: swinging legs side to side is a kind of twisting motion with large lever arms; similar “straight leg” increases demand on obliques + stabilizers. PubMed ID: 33344022