Hip Flexors-Midsection Conditioning Question

[wheez]

The typical ab workout description discourages the traditional, old style sit-up. Saying that sticking your toes under a chair and sitting up gets your hip flexors involved so the abs aren't "isolated".

It made me wonder if isolation might be great for body shaping, but what if the hip flexor using sit up isn't the better exercise for the grappler.

In grappling you need a good gut to keep you off your back and draw you toward the opponent and also to control where you move your center of gravity. Most of those movements are done pulling the upperbody around using the hips and legs.

What do you think? Are crunches just doing part of the job for the grappler mid section?

I know the conditioning is totally different. Being able to do lots of crunches doesn't mean you can do lots of situps.

[Underdog]

What are you training for?

If you are intersted in cosmetics and muscle beach showoff, well you training must be geared in order to contract to the maximum the muscless you hope to develop; in this optic you skip the hip flexors action with such esercises as the hanging leg raises, crunches etc. etc.

If, insted you are more geared into a FUNCTIONAL muscolar development, so to speak, bear in mind that training your hip flexors wouldn't be a bad idea. Bear in mind that generations of boxers have trained their misection with traditional situps and roman chair.

Strong hip flexors are a bonus in throwing strong knees; in working from the guard, doing bridges, and so on.

Remember, you training must be dictated by the results you want to achieve: to be in fighting shape is not the same to be in shape for the beach....

Heee, he , heee....

[Bad Karma]

Very good point...

I highly recommend Legendary Abs II to anyone wanting to develop abdominals. Pay attention to "why" you don't do certain exercises and see if those will or will not help what you need helped.

While in the Army, I used to to traditional sit ups with a weighted curl bar held behind and in front. I did these to help me with the required motion for testing and not caring what they developed. Besides, the 4 day weekends for maxing the PT test was worth it.

Also, if you run to help trim yourself down. I would like to give honorable mention to runing backwards as often as you would wind sprint. No idea why, but it took me from a 2 mile run time of 14:10 to 11:05.

Push ups had me with a heavy ruck (75 lbs) doing as many as quickly as I could and then as slowly as I could. I would do diamond hands, shoulder wide/elbows in, shoulder wide/elbows out, and wide arms. I never had a problem maxing push ups with time to spare.

Can't do anything close to that now. Hey! I'm almost 32, wife, two kids, job, same old excuses life so readily provides us. LOL!

Peace

[yusul]

wheez: if you only want to maximize your strength in the abdominal region it is better not to use your hip flexors. if you isolate the abs, you can work them more intensly and longer. unlike compound (or multi-joint) exercises, isolation exercises (where you only work one muscle group) does not depend on the strength of the weakest muscle. also, with isolation exercises, you know that you are working a specific muscle, and without (or with a minimal amount) of assistance.

for example, if you were doing leg press on a machine (quads), how much you can lift would depend on how strong your quads are, and you could basically continue reps til your quads tire. However, if you were doing squats (multijoint exercise using lower back, quad, adductors, etc), the factor limiting how much you could lift wouldn't be the quads but would be the lower back, the weakest muscle. therefore, if you purely want to increase your quad strength, leg press is the way to go, because the quads are not only not limited by the strength of the lower back. this example might be a minor factor for abs (i'm not sure that the hip flexors are weaker than the abs), but this is definitely a major factor to consider for other muscles.

going back to the abs, involving the hips will prevent you from stimulating your abs to the fullest, since your are lifting X weight assisted by hip flexors as opposed to lifting X weight unassisted. If you are worried about functional strength, IMO you don't need to be. If you are doing grappling and balance drills, you will be working the hip flexors anyways, so if you are using hip flexors during ab exercises, all you are doing is preventing your abs from reaching their maximum strength. btw, i liked legendary abs also.

[Edited by yusul on 10-25-2000 at 03:41 PM]

[Grapevine]

Interesting question. I recently started doing isolation ab exercises according to Pavel Tsatsouline's (sp?) instructions. He has a low opinion of crunches and prefer Janda situps. In these situps the hip flexors are minimally involved or not at all. Instead of hooking your feet under something, you have to have something bracing your calves or the back of your heels, because the idea is to tense your hamstrings and buttocks by trying to pull your heels to your butt while doing the situp. The tensing of the hamstrings and buttocks prevents the hip flexors from pulling. The other thing is to do the situp slowly with control, 3 seconds up, three seconds down.

I'll tell you, I can do hanging leg raises easy but when I tried the Janda situps for the first time I could hardly do two. I also found that this is much more similar in how the abs have to work when you have someone in your closed guard and you're trying to sit up to attack his neck or posture.

For more info check out Pavel's book Beyond Crunches, which I think might now be called Bullet Proof Abs in the second edition. He has other ab exercises too. Not only are my six packs more defined after 6 weeks of doing his rountine, my stomach muscles are definitely much, much stronger.

[yusul]

what do you specifically use to brace your calves/heels?

[Grapevine]

If you have a partner have him hook his hands on your calves or upper achiles as you lie with bent leg. If you don't have a partner you have to get creative. Another important point is having the legs bent at the knee and feet on the ground. At my gym there's an area with some vertical bars that run from the floor to waist high, similar to thin prison bars. I put my feet through, turn them slightly inward and hook my heels on the vertical bars. Anything that will allow you to use your hamstrings to pull your heels or calves against will do.

[wheez]

I looked up Pavel

Here for only 130 bucks, the ab pavelizer

http://www.dragondoor.com/yangsheng/products/p08.html

The exercise looks good. The cost seems high.