Time for some sit ups.  My 30 day goal for March 2007 is 100 sit ups per day, minimum.  I plan on doing a variety of sit ups to strengthen the abdominal muscles.  The crunch being one of them.

A stomach crunch is done by lying flat on your back with your knees bent then curling up the shoulders towards your hips.  What I won’t be doing is putting my hands behind my neck to help with crunches.  There is the possibility of injuring yourself if you start jerking around your head, especially as you get further along in a sit up set you get tired.  I plan on crossing my hands across my chest.  One other tip is to look at the ceiling and not at your knees.  For variety, I’ll likely add some kind of weight on my chest occasionally.  If I really wanted to get fancy, I would use a medicine ball.  I should clarify that unlike the traditionally sit up, the stomach crunch keeps the back on the floor throughout the entire exercise.  The crunch focuses on the rectus abdominis, while the sit up also uses the lower back and hip flexors.

I’m also planning on throwing in some twists that strengthen the abdominal oblique muscles when doing sit ups.  A little twist on the way up gives the body a chance to work those muscles on the side that might not otherwise get strengthened.

Just to be clear here, there are no plans to buy any kind of hardware to help with strengthening my stomach muscles.  No abulator type machine for me.

Another stomach strengthening type exercise I plan on doing is (I have no idea what this is called) sitting on my butt, legs and upper body off the group and thrusting my legs to one side while the upper body goes in the opposite direction as I compress my body.  Sounds confusing as all get out.  But I know from B.C. (before children) that this is a solid workout for the tummy.

Another exercise that falls in the sit up category is to lie on the floor, knees bent 90 degrees, feet flat on the ground and arms on the side of body, then pull knees up to chest, repeat.

If I’m feeling really motivated, I’ll get my kids involved.  I’ll have my nine year old son sit on my feet while I do the conventional sit up.  He’ll probably try to make me laugh, I’ll laugh and won’t be able to complete the sit up and will have to struggle to complete the remainder of the sit ups.

There will be other sit up type exercises that I will think up along the way.  The goal is to do 100 sit ups per day, at least.  If I get the urge, I’ll also through in some pushups too.

[tags]sit ups, stomach crunch, push ups[/tags]