If sit ups damage my back, what should I do instead?
this by the way is not it.
I have written in previous articles why you should not do sit-ups and how damaging it is for your back. So what should you do to get those abs strong?
If you are still doing sit-ups-stop! You are hurting your back. Firstly, sit-ups are pretty ineffective because they use a lot more of your hip flexors to bring you off the floor rather than your stomach muscles. Secondly, and more importantly if you do enough of them you will damage your lower back. The posterior loads that you put on your back and discs are enormous when doing these crunches. How much force? You actually exceed the compressive loads that are recommended as safe by the national institute for occupational safety and health. You know not to be bent over with a rounded back or slouched at the computer because it hurts your back. Sit-ups encourage that rounded posture that we know is so damaging in daily activities. The last thing you need to have is more forward rounded posture. So how do you strengthen your abs without wrecking your back?
Before we start you should know that in order to protect your lower back from injury doing abdominal strengthening exercises are only one part of the program. If you think of a tent pole as your spine and tie three ropes from the tent pole to the ground in each direction, those three ropes represent your stabilising muscles for your spine. If you strengthen one muscle group too much the other will get pulled and lengthened too far thus causing instability once again. It’s just like if you were to pull one of your guy-ropes on your tent pole too tight, the pole would lean to one side. The abdominals represent only one rope. The other two ropes or muscle group need to be strengthened as well. I will write more on this in a later post.
Here’s one way to strengthen your abs safely:
Lay on your back with the hands under your lower back palms facing down. This is essential to protect your back. You do not want to flatten your back to the ground. Have one le straight and the other leg bent with the knee flexed at 90 degrees. By having the leg bent helps prevent the spine flattening to the floor as well. You then lift your upper back and neck off the ground as one unit. It is imperative that you do this correctly. Make sure that you are not curling your neck or pushing your chin forwards. Imagine that you have a steel rod through your neck and upper spine. Also, place your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth. This will engage your neck stabilisers.
The beginning stage of these curls is to do them without lifting your elbows off the ground. The next level is to do them in the same way but lift your elbows off the ground an inch or so.
If your neck hurts doing these you may need to do some isometric neck stabilisers. These are very easy to do.
If you would like more information please feel free to email me at
Mark Perren-Jones