The latest snippet from the YODA Archives. This raises several issues - some of which relate to exercise physiology in general (I've applied bold & italic to those bits and will pull those out for further discussion later) =================== The United States Navy Seals get involved in the Abdominal Controversy by Fred Koch The first Naval Special Warfare Sports Medicine Conference was held on 4-6 May 1994 at the Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California. The goal of the panel would be to critique the conditioning exercises employed by the various special warfare teams. The conference was to concentrate on two functions of physical training, conditioning and stretching. A review of current exercises and suggestions to improve these exercises was the goal. The Navel Seals could not afford to have injuries due to old exercise formats. The Navy Seals training center is at Coronado Calif. near San Diego would be the location of the conference. Some people seem to forget how important the military’s and other organization are to our country and our everyday well being. It was best put by a Marine Colonel at the opening of the conference. Most of the people at the conference were from the various aspect of the sports and medical field, from research scientist to Olympic trainers, He gave an example to myself and some of the others that, has stuck with me ever since and truly puts in the right perspective how important these men are, not only the Seals are but of our entire military. The Coln. asked a question. "How serious would you train your athletes if you knew that ever time they went out to compete they could die?". To say he stopped the group, put it mildly. I knew I had never thought of it in that way, nor had the others in the group. The conference was taken much more seriously after that. Mr Ryan: If you look at the functionality of the sit-up as far as what its going to do, it's not exactly functional because you put very little from a spine neutral position. You do most of your activity from the spine extended position to a spine flexed position. CDR. Moore: From extension to neutral is where you get the maximum benefit. Dr. Francis: Equal distance beyond that. You want to be equidistant either side of anatomical position because that's functionally where you operate when you deviate from neutral. CDR. Moore: But you're saying once you get past spine neutral you're starting to throw in hip flexors. Mr. Ryan: Not Necessarily. Is the sit-up as its done now functional? No. Because in most activities we function from spine extended position to a spine flexed position. Now in a sit-up as depicted (in the video) here and what everyone generally does, you only move from a spine neutral position to a spine flexed position. CDR. Moore: So the sit-ups should go from a spine extension. Once you get past neutral and forward and you hook electrodes to somebody's abdomen, are they firing? Dr. Francis: Yes. They continue to fire, but mechanically, as that movement decreases. As you bring your trunk over your sacrum there is no load.... they are active- they're surprising active over quite a range. Dr. Almeida: Right, There's also a big difference in the effect depending on whether or not somebody holds your feet. If you perform a sit-up, bent knee, without your feet held down, the rectus abdominus fires more than if your feet are held. CDR. Moore: What's the hitch that Fred's talking about here through that range of motion? Dr. Francis: It's just reiterating what was said. The human posture, when you're doing most things, centers around a slight gentle lordotic curve. What your abdominal do is bring you into slight flexion from there in the real world or bring your back from slight hyperextension from there. So if you start and mimic an erect standing position with some kind of lumbar support, in the few degrees up through to a neutral spine beyond is the functional range that you swim, you sky dive, you walk, you run, that's the range you need. Mr Koch: What we find is that when you hold your feet and you move your center of gravity, that's why it goes to hip flexors. When you're functioning, you still have to have that weak link where the hitch is. And that's how we do things. I mean we're doing things through that weak link. I really think that has to be considered with the sit-up. And again with the sit-up you want to work the hip flexors because what I've seen in sports is we've lost a whole generation of kids who can't run because they don't do sit-ups anymore so they have weak hip flexors and they can't run. There's no transition between the abdominal work and your hip flex- ors, I mean the muscles have to work together and be balanced together. If you bring one set of muscles up you have to bring the weak link up (IM- in this case lower ab function) just like what you were talking about with the push-up- the push -ups won't go up until you bring the serratus muscles up, Well it's the same with the situp- and I think the sit-up is a functional exercise and it's something that if you are not holding down the feet and if it's done properly, and the weak link is worked, it's a good movement. Maj. Lillegard: Mr Koch, are you saying that people are using momentum in the initial part to get them through that? Mr. Koch: Of Course. We all know that. Everyone looks at how many numbers we do, not at what the goal is. The end goal is to be a functional machine, not how many numbers we can get to that end goal. If you did a sit- up correctly like that guy was doing you may find you'll only be able to do 20 or 10 because of that weak link. Isn't that what we want to deal with so that we become a better functional machine overall. / CDR. Moore: I think numbers do get important in PRTs (fitness tests) and especially when you get into that mentality. LCDR Meyer: Yes. And in certain amount of time. CDR Moore: I think we are moving in to the question of hip flexors, and I think we'll address that in just a minute. LCDR Meyer: yes, we'll have to. Are you saying that they should be worked out separately or together or.....? Mr Koch: You could work them out separate-but what's the end goal? The end goal is to have them work together. So to work the pieces- to work two strong pieces, hip flexors and say upper abdominals in this case and leave the center and lower abdominals out, lower abdominals do spin the pelvis, right? DR. Francis: Well I'm not sure what lower abdominals are... Mr Koch: The lower segment to the rectus abdominus. Dr. Francis: It goes all the way form the .... it's full length there. Mr Koch: Right, but the lower segment, It's segmented because of the pivot point. Dr. Francis: Any nerve fiber can go to numerous section of muscle between the tendinous inscriptions, and they're all mixed up. Which means you cannot independently fire separate segments of... Mr Koch: You see, there's a whole group of people that says that they do have some segmentation, because when you're running a movement... Dr. Francis: Segmentation exists, but they are not independently innovated. There's hard research that shows that. Where as I know outside the community there are lots of ideas about abdominals. There's more talk about abdominals than any other part of the body with less justification for strong opinion, It's a difficult area to research. We tried to do some a Children's Hospital but no one wants to volunteer to have needles stuck in the different layers of your abdominal muscles not knowing where we're putting them. They're as thin as paper. And getting a fine wire electrode in there is really tough. So there's a lot of speculation about the abdominals. I'm a little curious of dogmatic statements other than thinking in a biomechanical sense about things that are proven to create a training effect. Mr Koch: So we don't have an argument".Let's say the weak link-there's a weak link in the movement of the body and that's what I'm saying is that you have to concentrate. There ought to be something to deal with the weak link of that movement where your hip flexors take over- your abdominals switch into hip flexor, There's a switch over point, so that we don't get into lower/upper abdominals. Dr. Francis: Yes, I'll buy that. Mr, Koch: there's a switch over point and you'll see it in himwhere he does that little hitch. If you lay on the floor and try to do one, you'll see the switch over point. That's what I'm saying is of concern. The upper and lower... we can strengthen them, Or the hip flexors and the abdominals... you can strength them. But, unless we deal with the weak link...I think that's the most neglected piece that becomes the biggest problem for low ab work, for any kind of trunk rotation or pack carrying or hill climbing and that kind of thing. Dr. Almeida: What's your concern about? Is there some evidence that indicated- what you're calling the "weak link"- is associated with injury? Mr Koch: We're looking for balance. The body works in a balancing position. If we want the body to come up in a functional atmosphere-like we're talking about combat here-what we want to do is not strengthen strong points, we want to strengthen weak links. That brings the whole structure to the higher level for injury prevention. =====================
Good one! I am constantly reading new reports as of late. If you're involved in a sport or activity that requires strong hip flexors (such as the ma's), correctly performed "sit-ups" should be performed as part of your training program. Certain movements are mean't to involve both the hip and rectus abdominus. There's very little evidence to show that anyone with a healthy spine needs to avoid exercises that work both muscle groups simultaneously. The fact it's so difficult to perform a sit-up without working both the hip and abdominals shows that these muscles were designed to work together. You can also take it up a notch and press your heels into floor (toes up) to further work the hip flexors and abs ( lower abs too) .... and if yo want to add the obliques too, you can add a twist to your situp at the start, rather than at the end of a sit-up.
