(calypso music)
- Hi, my name is Brad Heinick,
I'm a physical therapist and what I'd like to do
is talk to you about sit-ups.
As a therapist, I get people coming in and say,
"geez, I want to work on my abdominal muscles
and, you know, get that 12 pack,
I mean that six pack there".
And so, sit-ups as far, in my mind,
are probably one of the things that are done improperly,
people are abusing their spines, particularly their neck,
as well as their lower back,
they're beating their spine up from top to bottom,
doing their sit-ups.
And as a therapist, we often work with core,
the stomach muscles, to help treat back pain
and stabilize that core for numerous activities
and numerous reasons so I just wanted to go briefly
over sit-ups, number one how to do them
as well as how not to do them.
(groaning)
Sit-ups. That is one way how not to do them.
The old thing about putting the hands behind the neck
and going forward and pulling on your neck
to get that extra little push.
What it does, it ends up stressing your neck in a big way.
You work the muscles here
but you're sacrificing your neck as a result of it.
Do not to sit-ups that way.
The old fashioned sit-ups when I was a kid
was these, go all the way up and touch your toe
and all the way back for the presidential award,
we had to do this when someone's holding onto your ankles.
That is not the way to do them either.
It's probably better than tugging on your neck
but there's better ways to do it.
What we're doing is working on the abdominal muscles
right here.
You got the rectus muscles, the oblique muscles,
and they're all right here.
And to make those contract
and get an effective strengthening motion
you do not have to get full range of motion
up to here and all the way back,
we can do that simply by lifting our shoulders
and shoulder blades off the ground
and coming back and get good work
on those trunk muscles, okay.
So when you do a sit-up, what I like to do,
this is one of the techniques
I like to teach to my patients,
is I usually have them bring their knees up like so,
feet flat on the floor,
not on a bed but on a firm floor or firm surface,
cross the hands across like this
and we keep the head straight,
we're not doing this, bouncing your head up and down,
we are keeping the spine straight.
And as you can see, as I talk,
or you can hear as I talk, I should say,
I'm working those stomach muscles good right now,
working the rectus abdominis, okay,
that's that six pack that you're gonna do,
these are the ones that are gonna really work those muscles.
But remember we need to work all the fibers
of the muscles of the stomach
so I tell people, take the right elbow
bring it towards the left knee.
Now I'm not saying you have to go all the way up
and touch the left knee, okay,
you can do that but you don't need to.
But we're gonna bring it towards the opposite knee
and that's gonna work those oblique fibers.
Okay. So here, and I do alternate it, okay.
Both sides, and it just seems to work out better
for most people.
Again, my head's not going up and bobbing,
trying to keep that cervical spine
in a neutral position as we work those sit-ups.
Okay? If you wanna work the lower part of your stomach
then we can start working, what you want do is,
if you put your hand back here in your lower back,
if you can get your hand back there,
tighten your stomach muscles up,
and this is hard to see but I'm flattening my back
right to the floor and that keeps my back
in a more neutral position and we can start
working knees to chest.
Okay, this is where you start,
keeping that back flat on the floor the best you can.
Okay. That's phase one.
You wanna make it a little more difficult,
we can start going out like this. Okay?
That gets more difficult.
And what happens is, we call it
the back will collapse and arch up
if we're not strong enough.
And if you feel your back arch up right in here,
that can irritate your back.
This is pretty advanced, you're not gonna do this
unless you got pretty good, very strong stomach muscles.
Okay, so if you just start that,
don't even consider that one.
Those are just a few techniques
that I like to teach and use.
There are many more.
The next thing I really like
for trunk and core strengthening
is right here using the stability ball.
These are very common, at one time they were used
just by therapists and as things have evolved,
they're, you know all over, in every department store
you can think of.
And I'm just gonna give one example on the ball.
Arms here, and you simply work your stomach muscles
just as if you were doing them on the floor.
The nice thing about the ball,
if I roll down to here it supports a different aspect,
a different area of my back.
It's actually a little easier here
so this is where you start.
As you get more advanced and stronger,
you start going back and here you can work
more range of motion.
Okay. Now I have a video for this ball.
You can go on our website, physicaltherapyvideo.com
and I have two parts on there,
part one, and part two,
it'll go through all the details
on how to work abdominal muscles and more
using the stability ball.
Okay. All right. Worked my stomach muscles.
Now my heart rate is up a little bit,
my body core temperature is up,
and that's what's gonna happen when you work them.