How To Do Sit-Ups: Getting a Flat Stomach

For years, the preferred activity for flattening your stomach has been doing sit-ups.  If you want to see the benefits of these stomach toning exercises, you need to use proper form. This will help you flatten the tummy in time for summer. Follow these instructions to do sit-ups.

1. Lie on the floor. Make sure you have enough room to move without hitting any furniture or walls. If you have pets or children, get them out of the way before you start, because once you lie down on the floor, you are asking for their attention.
2. Flatten your back and pull your knees up so they point toward the ceiling with your feet flat on the floor. By pulling your knees up, you are positioning your back so that you do not strain the lower back muscles. You may need to rest here for a moment before getting started on your sit-ups. Many people carry a lot of their daily tension in their lower back and flattening it out may cause soreness until the muscles relax a bit.
3. Choose the position of your hands. There are several options for hand position. Some people prefer to leave their arms down by their sides or place them straight up in the air. Either of these choices makes the sit-up harder to do. They also leave your neck unprotected. The best position for your hands is to hold them lightly under your head but barely touching you. Here you can support your head and neck but the light touch will keep you from pulling on your neck or jerking when you pull your shoulders up.
4. Inhale a breath. Remain with your shoulders on the floor as you take in air.
5. Raise your upper body as you exhale. Pull your stomach muscles in toward your spine so that these muscles are doing the work instead of your back, arms or shoulders. Control the move so that you slowly rise until your back is straight at a ninety-degree angle from the floor. Make sure that as you rise up, your neck is straight and your head remains in alignment with your back.
6. Slowly lower back down to the ground. Inhale as you carefully lower back down. Feel your abdominal muscles contract and use them to control the motion.
7. Repeat the lowering and then rising movement for more sit-ups. Do as many sit-ups as your body feels comfortable with. You should complete ten if you are inexperienced, and as many as fifty if you have experience. When your abdominals start to burn a little, do three to five more sit-ups and then stop.

Now you can do stomach toning exercises without hurting yourself. Sit-ups can be a great exercise for your stomach muscles. When done correctly, you only have to do a few each day to see the benefits of getting a flat stomach.

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Hula Hooping vs. Sit-Ups

In ancient Egypt, kids swung grass hoops around their waists. But it wasn’t until the late 1950s that plastic hula hoops were launched in the American market and became a popular toy. Since then, hoops have evolved into a fitness tool, providing a total-body cardio workout. Compared to hooping, sit-ups are a form of calisthenics, targeting your abs and hip flexors for strengthening.

Targeting Versus Total-Body Exercise

A sit-up is designed to isolate and strengthen your front abdominal wall, or rectus abdominis, hip flexors and lower back. Because you lift your lower back off the ground, you activate your hip flexors and the stabilizing muscles in the lumbar spine. When performing a hooping session, you use a 1- to 4-pound hoop with a diameter ranging from 37 to 45 inches. The circling movement of the hoop actually depends on hip thrusts in which you move your hips forward and back. The standard hooping exercise tones your hip flexors, lower back, abdominals, obliques, quads and hamstrings. You can also circle the hoop around your arms, which helps build the muscles in your shoulders, chest and upper extremities.

Big Difference on Calorie Burn

In 2011, the American Council on Exercise sponsored a study on the intensity and calorie burn of hooping workouts. Researchers at the Exercise and Health Program at the University of Wisconsin studied the effects of a 30-minute hooping workout on the heart rate and oxygen consumption of 16 participants, ranging between the ages of 16 and 59. They found that people burn an average of seven calories per minute, or 210 calories for 30 minutes of hooping. The rigor and calorie burn of hooping compares to cardio kickboxing, step aerobics and boot-camp workouts. In contrast to hooping, sit-ups don’t burn many calories. As a form of calisthenics, a 123-pound individual can expect to burn 126 calories doing sit-ups for 30 minutes.

Core Strength and Technique

Sit-ups are typically incorporated into a core strengthening regimen, building stability and abdominal power for a variety of sports. By conditioning your lower-back muscles, sit-ups also help to alleviate back pain and issues, according to the University of California, Berkeley’s “The New Wellness Encyclopedia.” If you’re just spinning the hoop around your waist and rocking back and forth on your feet, you won’t get a rigorous core workout in the same way that you can with sit-ups. Begin a hooping workout for your core by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart and feet parallel. As the hoop makes contact with your navel, push your stomach out to push the hoop and give it the momentum to circle. By expanding and contracting your abdominals while you hoop, you can strengthen your core muscles. In contrast to sit-ups, hooping also improves your hand-eye coordination, rhythm, motor skills, balance and flexibility. While rhythm isn’t a decisive factor in completing a sit-up, you need to develop a sense of rhythm to keep the hoop rotating around your hips or the hoop will topple to the floor.

Flexibility and Variations

Sit-ups involve a pre-determined range of movement. In comparison to hooping, it’s not a flexible exercise that can be modified on a whim in the middle of a workout. The point of a sit-up is to complete the desired number of reps with the same movements. While you can add resistance to a sit-up, such as holding a weight plate, you typically perform other exercises, such as crunches, planks, bicycles, leg raises and trunk rotations, to achieve a balanced strengthening program for your core. In contrast to sit-ups, you can improvise movements in the middle of a hooping workout. For example, hooping classes at gyms incorporate dance moves to provide variety and novelty. How you move your arms or body while the hoop rotates around your body is limited only by your imagination. You can pivot on one foot, do step touches or shimmy the hoop up and down your body, according to “Hooping: A Revolutionary Fitness Program” by Christabel Zamor and Ariane Conrad.

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How to Exercise to Lose Belly Fat in Just 30 minutes a Day Without Doing Sit Ups

The struggle to lose belly fat can be absolutely daunting! Sit ups are repetitious and boring. However, most people think they are the key to losing unwanted belly fat. Wrong! You can lose Belly fat as well as become overall slimmer without doing a single sit up. Below are a few easy steps to help you reach your weight loss goal.

Tips For You

1. The first step along your path to losing those love handles is to get MOVING! That's right get up off the sofa and move, move, move! Now you may be thinking "I'm already active". This may be true but you need to exercise continuously for at least 30 minutes a day. In order to lose belly fat you need to take part in a cardiovascular exercise such as running, jogging, or brisk walking. Myself, I am not much of a runner so I chose to simply walk. Walking is a great form of exercise. Whatever exercise you choose just be certain to stick with your routine and exercise at least 30 solid minutes each day. If your schedule doesn't permit you to exercise every day at least do so 5 days a week. Every day is better but 5 will suffice.
2. On the days that you cannot adhere to your 30 minute exercise rule you should at least take a few extra steps where you can. If you go to the store or post office park a few spaces away and walk to the door. Skip the elevator and take the stairs. Making small changes is where big results begin.
3. Of course common sense dictates that you should pay attention to your diet as well. You don't have to go on a super strict fad diet. Just make more healthy food choices. Choose whole wheat as opposed to white processed breads. Opt for a piece of fruit instead of cake. Don't skip meals. Eat three balanced meals a day and have healthy snacks. Choose baked not fried foods. If you have chicken remove the skin. Stay away from sugar, junk food, and starches. Its the simple things that make all of the difference.
4. The final and last step is to just keep in mind that your goal to lose belly fat is not a radical process. Your goal is to make a gradual lifestyle change. Make healthy food and exercise choice each day and they will become a way of life. Skipping the bake potato at dinner and exercising 30 minutes a day doesn't seem like a lot but you will notice a slimmer new you in no time!

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