Great questions
to ask yourself AND have a logical, common sense /physiological answer
1. WHY are we doing this Exercise?
2. HOW does it work?
3. Is there a better, safer, more effective exercise, or is this the best one?
4. If I said this exercise burns fat - HOW does it do that, and how much does
it actually burn?
5. Is there an exercise that would burn fat faster? Make me stronger faster?
So, what's about some silly exercises? Why
do we keep doing them? We do sit-ups because we think they might be burning fat
off our tummy as we can feel a burning sensation. Does it mean that they are
exploding fat cells?
Do Sit-ups burn the FAT off?
However, if you have a look at that
exercise in particular, logically, you can't think of only one spot on your
body burning fat off. We know that - that's physiology and you can't change
that. Even if you think that you are burning fat off that area, in fact, you
aren't. You'll have a burning sensation because you're producing lactic acid in
that spot. That's an acid that pushes up against your nerve endings and creates
a burning sensation.
Do Sit-ups make Abdominal muscles strong?
The other reason, people do sit-ups is that
it's going to strengthen their abdominals. However, your abdominals are
designed to hold you in the upright position and work in conjunction with your
lower back muscles to make sure that you don't hurt your spine. So when you get
down on the floor, your lower back muscles don't have to do anything because
that's what the floor was doing. And the amount of weight that you're lifting
off the floor is just your own head. So with that much weight, what are you
really challenged with? So it's not an exercise of strength in your abdominal
area.
What burns FAT and Makes Abdominal
Muscles Strong?
Sit-ups don't burn fat, and they don't make
your abdominal muscles stronger.
If you want to get strong muscles, you have
to stand up and do big exercises where your abdominal muscles have to work
really hard to support your entire body which happens when you do squats or
dead-lifts. You burn fat as well as build stronger abdominal muscles.
How do Sit-ups hurt in the long-term?
Here's the unfortunate thing. Sit-ups hurt
you back if you grind a joint over and over and particularly your Lumber-4 or
Lumber-5 and your spine. When you're doing sit-ups and crunches, you might not
have pain in your back today or tomorrow. Maybe you never have it as you may
not be doing many sit-ups because you don't like them. You might do a few
hundred sit-ups two or three weeks and then not do any for a few months. So it
doesn't usually matter.
However, when you're a disciplined person,
you really think that sit-ups are going to burn fat off your tummy and give you
strong tummy muscles, you do lots of them. This causes grinding of the
vertebral disc between your Lumber-four and five and your spine. Then you end
up at 30, 40, 50 years of age with a really sore back. And that's a real
challenge. If you want to keep exercising, burn fat off your body, stay
healthy, fit and strong for the rest of your life, is it worth doing sit-ups?
If you have a sore back, isn't it tough to do anything?
Get Huffy-Puffy and lift heavy to burn FAT
Conversely, if you want to do a great
exercise to burn fat off your tummy, pick one that makes you huffy-puffy really
hard. It could be sprinting, cross-trainer or boxing - as long as you can - for
10 seconds or 15 seconds. Then have a rest. Do it again. You are turning your
body into a fat-burning machine.
If you want to get strong abdominal
muscles, do big exercises that require you to lift heavy things more than you
would normally lift. And then your abdominal muscles will have to work really
hard to hold you in the upright position. And suppose you don't want to hurt,
in that case, you better get your body up off the floor and make sure that your
abdominal muscles are working in conjunction with your lower back muscles to
support your spine, not grind your spine. That happens when you do squats,
lunges, dead-lift types of big functional exercises.
Could you be Healthy, Fit and Strong for Life?
Look
after your body; stop doing silly exercises. Most importantly, choose to be
healthy, fit and strong for a lifetime. So, we've never got an excuse to say; I
have to be overweight, I have to be unfit, I have to be unhealthy because I
screwed up my joints when I was young doing silly exercises. Don't be that
person.