Are sit-ups bad for you? And what to replace them with?

OK well I guess it had to happen some time but I finally posted a comment that got disagreed with lols, it only took six months. I could be wrong about power lifting causeing loss of range and flexibility but I also have to consider my own personal experience and that tells me that lifting really heavy makes some yoga poses very very difficult, especially anything that involves touching both hands behind your back, I also felt like my punches were maybe not as snappy back in my power lifter days, now Im sure all that can be fixed with alot of stretching, I mean Ive seen some super flexible guys who were freakin enormous but that kinda flexibility dosent come by stretching for ten minutes a day either. So let me restate my comment more accurately.

If you power lift you will loose range of motion and speed in your punches if you dont stretch alot, and I personally dont wanna spend that much time in a gym these days, so maybe we can split the fifty quid lols.

Now about this ab routine thig we are all banging our heads on the walll about I may have come up with something else that might prove useful to all us aspireing fat boddies out here. I notice that theres a good deal of material on Isometric exorcize and that a lot of martial artists are doing Iso kicks to improve balance as well as strength and flexibility, so heres what I came up with. Would it be useful to stand flat footed and contract your abs and release them in order to target those muscles, this would prevent contracting the spine in an uncomfortable way. Just a thought I havent used that method myself yet but Im wondering if there could be something to that.

Ok about planking, in reply to that question fish, umm no I actually dont plank in my personal routine except during push ups which I only do once a week, so no I dont plank.

I know that people are saying that contracting your abs during planking is really really useful for strengthing the core but I dont know because I havent done it myself yet. I would wonder if the cow cat pose in yoga wouldnt be more back friendly if you did them while contracting your abs, all things Im still working on and thinking about as I get older and continue to build my own work out. Thanks alot guys you are the ones that keep me sane.

 

One of these days Im going to have the whole core strength thing down to a science until then Im just gonna keep reading these forums and researching how best to train my abbs, I think I will try some planking though.

 

I know this is a bit of an old post, just had a couple of questions regarding safe ab exercises.

If you look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdominal_exercise#Safety_of_abdominal_exercises

it states that crunches are among the safer exercises to do, with hanging knee raises the worst with regards to back safety....I know it's only wikipedia, so checked the reference and the full research paper that it's from is here:

http://www.luzimarteixeira.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/abdominal-e-dor-lombar.pdf

Seems legit, so I'm now a little confused as to what is and isn't safe when doing abdominal exercises....

 

Look up "Stuart McGill" in reference to back safe exercises

 

Even though this is an older thread, ap never got an answer so I'll oblige.

Personally if someone had never done any kind of training up to this point, planks would be my go-to movement for anyone. Front planks and side planks would help a lot in developing anyone, and will be challenging enough for a while with all the different variations.

As far as sets and times for a beginner, using a Tabata-like interval is a good starting point. 20 second hold, 10 second rest, 8 sets total. Do front planks on the odd sets, and side planks on the even sets (so a total of 4 front planks and 2 side planks on each side).

 

There are lots of ways to work one's abs without sit-ups. The kinds of workouts that are part of yoga, Pilates, as well as other workouts such as Billy Blank's Tae Bo or MeanAbs.com are all possibilities for people to work their abs with great variety.

 

Didn't realise I posted alreadu