Traditional Sit Up1

Why We Don’t Program Sit-Ups into Your Workouts

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.

dying-bug

 

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