Weighted sit-ups

[Cathain]

Are weighted sit-ups a good idea?
The potential benefits seem obvious but I've heard that they can be bad for the lower back. Is it safer to just do decline sit-ups instead when i want to add more intensity to my normal sit-ups?

[narcsarge]

If you do weighted situps on an incline and don't allow your back and shoulders to touch you shouldn't risk injury. That being said, I much prefer weighted Ab Crunches while kneeling at a high cable pull down station. I use a rope handle and do my crunches w/ my hands on the sides of my neck.

[Athleng Nordic]

Weighted sit-ups are not bad in and of themselves, but you do need to work the back muscles as well. So if you're doing one side flip over and work the other side. All is in balance.

[Cathain]

How would I go about working the back muscles that way?
I can see how using the cable pull down, but with free weights just arch the back whilst holding the weights out in front?

[Yohan]

I don't do any kind of isolated ab work during my weights. Deadlifts/powercleans (we just started those) tend to hit all of my core pretty hard. I also do some bus drivers as part of my lifts (I can't even find a description of that online), plus some medicine ball slams. I'm pretty confident about my core strength.

Do deadlifts to work your back, glute ham raises and reverse hypers are also good.

[Yohan]

How would I go about working the back muscles that way?

Supermans would be good.

[Athleng Nordic]

How would I go about working the back muscles that way?
I can see how using the cable pull down, but with free weights just arch the back whilst holding the weights out in front?

As noted supermans are good, so are good mornings and back extensions.

:google: He is your friend

[Cathain]

Excellent, thanks for the advice folks :)

[Yohan]

www.exrx.net is also your friend.

[CosmicFish]

I don't do any kind of isolated ab work during my weights. Deadlifts/powercleans (we just started those) tend to hit all of my core pretty hard. I also do some bus drivers as part of my lifts (I can't even find a description of that online), plus some medicine ball slams. I'm pretty confident about my core strength.

Do deadlifts to work your back, glute ham raises and reverse hypers are also good.
Just a tip from a personal anecdote. I've been training with the same philosophy - "I'll do deads and squats, I don't need direct ab work". Now, after two years, I have a lower back injury which flares up every time I squat or deadlift heavy. Turns out I have anterior pelvic tilt and the accompanying lordosis. Now it's arguable that I already had this to some extent, but the heavy deads would have certainly made it worse.

It's worth mentioning why I didn't do ab work from the start. To be honest, it was mostly an ego thing. I wanted to distance myself from the skinny "abs and bicep" guys. I prided myself on the fact I was doing "the heavy lifts". Common sense should have told me that if you work your back, you should work your front too. After all, you don't work your biceps and not your triceps.

Long story short, I've now incorporated ab work (amongst other measures) into my routine to help bring things back into alignment.

Anyway, I'm not saying everyone who does deads only without ab work will develop problems. I doubt my posture was perfect when I started out. However, I'm throwing this into the thread as food for thought.

[Hiroji]

yeh, i see no reason to leave direct ab work out, its not like you would have to spend 30mins on them.

[Athleng Nordic]

As I noted before about balance, and Fishy gave a great anecdote, you have to keep it even. I learned this lesson with my chest and upper back.

Direct abs and lower back work shouldn't take you more then about 10 to 15 minutes in your workout. There are many combo lifts and statics you can do, but the direct work is need to keep it healthy.

Some things I find useful are to build them into the overall workout just to keep things movig and break up the routine a little. I'll hit a set of crunches between sets and then do a back extension between the next two. Keeps the blood moving and the sweat flowing. :)

[Yohan]

Just a tip from a personal anecdote. I've been training with the same philosophy - "I'll do deads and squats, I don't need direct ab work". Now, after two years, I have a lower back injury which flares up every time I squat or deadlift heavy. Turns out I have anterior pelvic tilt and the accompanying lordosis. Now it's arguable that I already had this to some extent, but the heavy deads would have certainly made it worse.

It's worth mentioning why I didn't do ab work from the start. To be honest, it was mostly an ego thing. I wanted to distance myself from the skinny "abs and bicep" guys. I prided myself on the fact I was doing "the heavy lifts". Common sense should have told me that if you work your back, you should work your front too. After all, you don't work your biceps and not your triceps.

Long story short, I've now incorporated ab work (amongst other measures) into my routine to help bring things back into alignment.

Anyway, I'm not saying everyone who does deads only without ab work will develop problems. I doubt my posture was perfect when I started out. However, I'm throwing this into the thread as food for thought.

What ab work are you doing?

[CosmicFish]

What ab work are you doing?
I did start off doing the Legendary Abs routine, since it came quite highly recommended by several posters on T-nation. It's pretty good, but it didn't seem like enough. I was deadlifting in the 140-150kg range for 25-30 reps at the time. Five minutes of bodyweight situps and assorted similar other exercises didn't seem like a reasonable counterbalance. Anyway, I've now signed up with the gym at work and I'm using their weighted crunch machine as well. I could have just done situps with a weight on my chest, but I've always found it awkward and fiddly.

[hl1978]

I prefer taking a medicine ball and putting it over my head while doing crunches.

Doing weighted inclined reverse situps put way too much stress on my lower back.

[Yohan]

Yeah we started doing something similar to the cable crunches, but with a resistance band on a pull up bar. We did v-situps, and some sprinter crunches. I think decline sit ups with weights sound like a solid option.

[Stuart H]

How would I go about working the back muscles that way?
I can see how using the cable pull down, but with free weights just arch the back whilst holding the weights out in front?

Deadlifts, cleans, squats and overhead presses all involve the muscles of the abs and back to a great degree - if you're not doing them anyway, why the hell not? Do them, and if you need any assistance exercises for the abs and back, do Roman chair situps and reverse hyperextensions respectively.

[slipthejab]

I find that doing sit ups where you end up sitting all the way tend to put a lot of stress on my lower back. While it's not ever given me problems I just avoid them. I tend to do more time on the crunch end of things... from standard crunches where I get the shoulder blades/upper back of the deck to side crunches where I get the shoulder/lats up off the deck. I find these to be pretty effective for conditioning the mid section.

On top of those I do a lot of standing rotational movements either weighted or on a cable machine for some variety. Though they're not strictly abs... more overall core.

I also do a fair bit of stuff like leg raises from the chin up bar... we've got a set of straps that you put your arms through up to the armpit basically and they're comfy for cranking out sets of leg raises and circular leg raises.

Though come to think of it... I'm not entirely sure where the line between ab/core/hip flexors ends and begins. I need to do a bit of in depth reading.

[Su lin]

Yeah we started doing something similar to the cable crunches, but with a resistance band on a pull up bar. We did v-situps, and some sprinter crunches. I think decline sit ups with weights sound like a solid option.

I had to stop doing v sit ups due to my lower back, they seem to be the thing that triggers the pain. I tend to do more crunches now than full sit ups and it seems to be working. Also I have just been introduced to the world of pain that is the side plank with crunch.OW! Doing loads of human sport cable machines in the gym which are definitely working for me.
Also been trying to do the leg raises on the pull up bars in the gym.
If I don't get killer stomach muscles soon there will be trouble :D Now just need to get rid of the flab that is hiding them :D

[TaeKwonDavid]

I find the best workout for my core muscles are the running squats and reverse squats. Leg raises are also a good option. If you're worried about damage to your back, one of the senior instructors in my TKD class taught me "skydiving," an exercise to strengthen the back. You lie on your front, extend your arms and legs, raise them, open them, close them, lower them. Repeat until knackered.

[Mr Punch]

First of all, it has been proven by calibrated intramuscular and surface EMG evidence that the crunch is very effective at challenging the rectus abdominus.[1,5] Important to our discussion is that rectus abdominus does play a part in core stabilization.[6]

So, what is the problem with the crunch then? I thought you would never ask! After a personal conversation I recently had with Dr. Stuart McGill, I believe there is a high risk for disk injury in performing crunches. Dr. McGill told me that in lab studies, the most reliable way to injure disks was to expose them to repetitive end range flexion in a cyclic manner. Now, think about how most people perform a crunch.

Everyone that comes into my office and shows me how they do crunches go into full spinal flexion. Not only do they go into full spinal flexion, but they perform hundreds or thousands of reps a week. Thus, we have a full spinal flexion (end range) exercise performed in a cyclic manner.

Crunches and sit-ups are bad. Full friggin stop. Saying 'It hasn't done me any harm,' is the same as the bloke jumping off the high-rise, going, 'So far so good, so far so good!' as he passes each floor.

Supermans are also bad.

One exercise that shows up again and again in their prescription is called "the superman." The exercise has other names but this is the most common. It is performed by laying flat on your stomach and raising the upper body and legs off the floor. In this exercise the lumbar spine pays a very high compression penalty to a hyperextended spine (approximately 4000 to 6000 N) which transfers load to the facet joints and crushes the interspinous ligament.[5] This exercise is certainly contraindicated for anyone at risk of low back injury or re-injury due to the high spine loads and the extended posture.[6] In my opinion it should not be prescribed at all.

So are leg raises (twice the compression on your lower back than supermans).

These quotes are from here (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/inmag29.htm) but just about anywhere will do. Eg,

here (http://impactpt.blogspot.com/2008/06/crunches-are-bad-for-you.html)

here (http://www.dietdebunker.com/2008/07/avoid-ab-crunches-situp-exercises.html)

They all come down to Stuart McGill. (His pdf for four simple exercises for lower back pain prevention and rehab is here (http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~mcgill/fitnessleadersguide.pdf). I used them for rehab from an oft-recurring herniated disc, and I use them for warm-downs for every session I do with weights or fu... no recurrence since I started). Usually I go for exrc for a lot of lifting advice, but I disagree with their assessment of crunches/sit-ups.

So, what to do?

Planks (various kinds)
Bent-knee curl ups (look up while doing them and raise enough to just leave the bottom of your shoulder blades on the floor)
Swiss ball crunches (these allow you to keep the all important arch in your lower back)
Abdominal bracing (check out Cosgrove or Zatsiorsky as to how - this is useful for all lifting, not just ab work)

Believe me. Well, more importantly, believe Stuart McGill.

Or, the other way to find out if I'm right is when you're in your 30s, 40s and your lower back goes, try doing supermans, crunches, bent-leg crunches, leg raises, sit-ups then... then you'll really know what part of the body is being worked in these exercises! :cry:

Now I'm going to repeat post this in every crunch/sit-up thread on MAP until someone makes it sticky. :bang: :hat:

[Axelator]

I was reading this article on sit ups, crunches etc. Apparantly the man who has the world record for doing sit ups has no abdominal definition because he simply trains the movement and is no longer benefitting the muscle.

OF course with weighted sit ups you can increase the weight to an extent. Once you reach the level where you can do lots with a 20kg plate remember to start using movement to train the muscles or you achieve nothing (unless you just want to be able to do hundreds of sit ups in which case keep going).