Friday, June 13, 2008

Substitutes for Sit ups

Doing sit ups are great help to make your tummy flat. However, there are occasions when sit ups can hurt your back and neck. But you don't have to stress yourself into doing sit ups for there are other exercises you can do to trim your tummy.
If you are psyched up by the thought of reducing your tummy fat without doing sit ups, you have to start putting your diet under your control and add up some aerobic exercises and resistance training to your daily schedule. To get rid of tummy fat you must reduce weight hanging all over your body since you cannot just reduce your tummy with a fat body. Then add these specific exercises for your tummy as alternatives for sit ups:
Circling your Legs or Leg Circles
Start by lying on your back either on a wide bench or on the floor. Pull your feet in so both of them are lying flat on the ground and then bent your knees around 80 to 90 degrees. As you keep you back flat and your abdominal muscles flat, bring one of your legs up facing the ceiling. Draw imaginary small circles on the ceiling with only one leg moving, refrain from moving your hips and spine. As this exercise becomes easier you put more challenge by drawing up bigger circles. Repeat the same exercise with your other leg.
The Hundreds or commonly known as One Hundreds
To do this exercise, you have to once again lie on your back either on a wide bench or the floor. Put up both of your legs with your feet pointing 40 to 45 degrees from the platform you are lying on. Put your hands to your thighs making sure that you keep your arms straight. Tighten your abs while holding your belly to your spine then put up your head together with the upper part of your shouders off the floor. While keeping your overall body posture intact, push or press your hands in an up and down in a repetitive manner. If you can, put your legs lower to put up some pressure on your abdominal muscles without hurting your back. Breathe in and breathe out in each 5 pairs of movement of your hands. Repeat the hand movements until you reach the count of one hundred.
The Hover or Hovering
The main focus of this exercise is to life your body of the floor as best as you can while supported by your knees and your forearms in a push up like manner. Begin the exercise by lying on your abs on the floor with forearms supporting you on the floor, near your chest area. Tighten your abdominal muscles then hold the tension for 16 to 20 seconds. to put more challenge, try straightening your legs while keeping your body off the from the area between your toes and your forearms. Concentrate on keeping your abdominal muscles tensed all through this exercise.
This exercises will be able you help you make your core muscles as well as trim your tummy. A little caution, while these exercises can be enjoyable be careful that you do not over train yourself with these.

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