3 Exercises Better Than Sit Ups

Sit-ups shouldn't be a part of your workout routine and not just because they are boring. If you're only doing sit-ups you are mainly training one part of your abs, your rectus abdominis. Sit-ups are also limited in terms of intensity and they can have a negative impact on your spine. Another problem with a traditional sit-up is that the second part of the movement is not about your abdominal muscles but instead about your hip flexors. In the first part you engage your abs and lift your shoulder blades from the ground. This movement is known as a crunch. In the second part you don't move any further with your abs. You just move your rounded upper body closer to your legs which is done by your hip flexors and not your abdominal muscles. But also the crunch itself is a limited and repetitive movement. There are other exercises that are a lot more efficient and offer a lot more bang for the buck. Today I am sharing three of these exercises and show you how they should be done. The first exercise is the knee raise. We consciously decided to choose knee over leg raises because a leg raise is a lot about mobility and not abdominal strength in the first place. If your rectus femoris isn't strong enough and your hamstrings are too tight this movement will be limited because of these weak points. The knee raise can be done in a supporting and in a hanging position. In both variations it's very important to stabilize your body the whole time. Don't use any momentum to do the movement. Another point both have in common is that you should avoid to arch your back and just move your knees. To activate your abdominal muscles you have to move your pelvis backwards. With this position you will engage your abs even before you raise your legs. When you raise your legs be sure to move them as close as possible to your chest. With this movement you will force the posterior pelvis tilt even more and you will engage your abs in an optimal way. When it comes to the hanging version you should always do the movement with an active hang. For that you pull your shoulder blades down and hold the tension in this area. This is very important to protect your shoulders from injuries. For the supporting version you do the same movement. The only difference is that your arms are not above but under your head. You should also aim for an extended but not over extended elbow. You can do your knee raises with your shoulders, wrists and the upper body in a vertical line and also with a little lean in which your shoulders pass your wrists. The next exercise is a combination between different movements. The first one is the knee to elbow plank. The starting position for this exercise is very important and a great exercise for itself. Like for the knee raises you aim for a posterior pelvis tilt to engage your abs. It's also very important to push your arms into the ground and try to push your shoulder blades forward and downward. Aim for a hollow body position for an optimal core engagement. From here you move your knee to the opposite elbow. Don't lean yourself forward if you can't reach the elbow with your knee. Hold the tension and only move your knee and try to tilt your pelvis as much as possible. The next part of the movement is the side plank. One of the biggest downsides of the crunch is the one-sided movement. With the knee to elbow and side plank combination you will not only hit your rectus abdominis but also your obliques. When you do the side plank you have to push your arm, leg and shoulder blade as much as possible into the ground and keep your body as horizontal as possible. Don't just hang in your structures. You can do the side plank with two legs on the ground and with one leg on the ground. Of course it's much harder to stabilize yourself with only one leg. The last exercise which is the forearm plank is similar to the previous one. But here you aim for another movement variation. The key points for the static position are the same as for the knee to elbow plank. But now we want to make this basic position more challenging. If a normal plank is quite easy for you, you can adjust the difficulty by lengthening the lever between the two supporting points. The further you move your body backwards and away from your hands the harder this exercise gets. But be careful because the bigger the lever the more stress you will put on your spine which is bad if you can't execute the exercise clean. So always aim for perfect form. Another great basic plank variation is the balance plank. You can extend your arm, your leg or even both to make the movement more challenging in terms of stabilization. As you can see there are a lot of better exercises with more possibilities for variations. And with that more chances for improvement. But don't just mix them somehow but with a program that makes sense. To see how this could look like take a look at our workout programs on the Cali Move website. For questions leave a comment. Thanks, Alex.