If you’ve ever opened a fitness magazine, looked through Instagram workouts or read a personal training manual, chances are, you’ve seen or heard about Sit-Ups. A traditional Sit-Up, like the one pictured above, has been used as an endurance test and a go-to abdominal exercise for at least half a century.
There are several reasons why we don’t program traditional Sit-Ups into our workout here at BIM…
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- They don’t fully engage deeper abdominal muscles that exercises like planks and dying bugs do
- They cause rounding of the spine and compression stress on the lower back
- They cause unnecessary stress on the cervical part of the spine when the head is pushed forward with the hands
- They promote tightness of the hip flexors (the muscles at the front of your pelvis) when the chest comes towards the knees
- They don’t “burn” or get rid of fat tissue around the abdomen (no exercise can directly do that)
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As an alternative to the Sit-Up, we prefer to coach exercises like Pull-Overs and Dying Bugs (pictured below) because when properly coached, both of these exercises minimize your risk of injury and strengthen your deeper core muscles.
Here are some Dying Bug and Pull-Over variations to add to your training regime:
Weighted Clam to Dying Bug
Band-Resisted Dying Bug
Dying Bug with Reach
Dying Bug with Anti-Cable Rotation
Supine Pull-Over