How do you get from crunch to Atlas situps?

[ShrinkingGuy]

I am knee-deep in the G.U.T.S. program.
I am at the elite level on the squats. No surprise there, I have been doing them 20 minutes a day for a couple of years now.

But the Atlas situps....I am at a pathetic 0 reps.

Is it this last 35 lbs of tire I am wearing, or what?

[JoeJustice]

Nah, I've still got a 15-20lbs spare tire I can do do the Atlas Sit-Up. I've been able to do both that and the full range leg raise for a long time. It's probably your hip flexors are weak and/or your hamstrings and quads are not in balance.

Can you do leg raises?

-Joe

[Hopeful]

I also like to say that I can't do a one Atlas Sit Up. I think the Atlas Sit Up would be great to do but yes how does one work up to them? It would be nice to get an answer to that question. I can do Hanging leg raises, and superman wheel roll outs, and superman push ups, but not a one Atlas Sit Up. I would love to do them, but I think how does one get to that point? Also I think it would be nice for those of us who have trouble with the Atlas Sit Up to have an different but recommended sit up variation to use in GUTS. The Atlas Sit Up is the primary reason I avoid GUTS.

Anyway GUTS is a great routine; I would love to add it in my routine,but....


PEACE

HOPEFUL

[JoeJustice]

Well hell... now that I find really interesting! Could it be a flexibility issue then? Crunches, hanging leg raises and rollouts require core strength rather than flexibility...

-Joe

[ShrinkingGuy]

I can do leg raises and captain's chair like a champ.
The leg raise is used in The Five Tibetans and I have been doing them for a while, in spite of what my wife's preacher thinks of them. LOL

[jasonmartin1967]

You could try the movement from the opposite end, start from the up position and work backwards ala the Lawrence Moorehouse Sitback exercise from his Total Fitness book doing isometric holds on the way down .
Just my 2 cents
Jason Martin

[Andy62]

I look at the crunch as more of a contraction exercise and the Atlas Sit UP as more of a flexibility exercise with a greater range of motion. If you have been doing crunches then your body has accommodated itself to that limited range of motion ending in a contraction. To retrain your body I think the suggestion of starting with Morehouse negatives would be the best approach.

[MikeNY]

ShrinkingGuy the Five Rites are great exercises! The leg raises in the Five Rites are also Atlas leg raises and great for the abs. Atlas use to recommend 100 per day of these leg rasies.

When you are doing a Atlas situp with the hands next to the head, make sure you are not pulling with the hands, like so many try, they pull with the hands, arms and shoulder's and use thier back muscles to try and get up. Start as though you are doing a crunch, hands just barely touching the head, do the crunch, then while in the up position of the crunch, use your stomach muscles to pull yourself up into a situp. You'll build flexibility. The Atlas full range leg raises build flexibility to.

ShrinkingGuy I didn't even know the Five Rites had any relation to religion? What can he object to? I am curious.

[jonlclay]

Have you tried to use your arms more in an effort to help you get off the floor? Greg N. stated he needed to do this and I still do this when I get tired. Put your arms over your head and then move them towards your legs using them to propel your upper body up. This may help your body get used to leveraging itself up from the floor. After time you don't need to use so much arm movement.

Some peoples body mechanics just aren't made for doing these full range. If your legs are shorter than your upper body or your legs come off the ground because your upper body weighs a lot more than your lower you can have a lot of difficulty.

Keep trying different ways until you figure it out.

Good luck and hope this helps.

Jon

[cliffa74]

In terms of the inability of performing a single atlas sit-up, I'm going to have go with the flexibility idea as well.
Which is a total guess, but sounds good.
It's fascinating though that you can perform other exercises which I consider to be even harder.
Everybody's body is different.

The crunches are probably not helping at this point. Your muscle memory and indeed muscle strength has become limited to that small range of motion. I would drop them. You could try full range sit-ups with your feet braced.
I know, I know, holding your feet down is evil. But, if your back can handle it, see what happens.

I also like the idea of the negative sit-up.

Let us know how it goes.

Cliff

[Greg Newton]

Have you tried to use your arms more in an effort to help you get off the floor? Greg N. stated he needed to do this and I still do this when I get tired. Put your arms over your head and then move them towards your legs using them to propel your upper body up. This may help your body get used to leveraging itself up from the floor. After time you don't need to use so much arm movement.

Some peoples body mechanics just aren't made for doing these full range. If your legs are shorter than your upper body or your legs come off the ground because your upper body weighs a lot more than your lower you can have a lot of difficulty.

I learned this from a Pilates book, BUT in the A&E Atlas Video, C/A has a class of women on the beach doing Dynamic Tension and this is the version of the situp that is being performed; arms above head, reaching forward and touching the toes. It took time for me to do more than 10 this way. Eventually I moved to sets of 25-50. As my waist started going down, the situps became easier and I began cupping my ears at my head.

I used to think I didn't have the leverage to do situps. However, the problem was spinal flexibility and the size of my waist. Also, it wasn't all fat. The combination of a hietal hernia and the hundreds of 90 degree leg raises I did for Kajukenbo had thickened my abdominal muscles, making them bulge even more than if had just been fat. Crunches, done in 100's of reps, being a limited isolation movement could also cause the waist to thicken.

Greg Newton

[MikeNY]

Greg those Atlas Beach situps for women are also the old Military Situp. These were used in High Schools also.

jonlclay: When you throw the arms forward it does assist in lifting a man but then back muscles then are playing a role. That can hurt the back but usually doesn't. PS so watch your back.

[Greg Newton]

Good points Mike. The key to the Atlas situp done in this fashion is to curl the spine rather than to just situp. It takes time to develop the isometric strength in the legs to keep them from flying up. As an aside on crunches: done with tension reps and done at multiple angles, they can be a great exercise. Done for hundreds of reps in one direction they will thicken the upper abdominal ridge. Hundreds of reps of the Atlas situp on the other hand will not do this, because this is more of total body exercise that works the abdominal muscles through a greater ranger of motion.

[jonlclay]

Greg & Mike,

Good points. I've been working to improve my Atlas Situps to help with a lower back issue and have started to perform them differently from in the past. I used to just sit up as with my back very straight, This causes me pain. I'm now curling up very slowly one vertebrae at a time like Greg has said. I do the same when going back down. I've noticed that in performing them this way my back does not hurt as much but also, I'm unable to perform as many as before, but feel this way will improve not only my core but also my flexibility.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Jon

[ShrinkingGuy]

Charles Atlas for the win...

Charles Atlas suggests doing these in bed before you get up in his course.
I figured if I couldn't do them on the floor, I couldn't do them in a soft bed with even less firm traction.

Well I tried it a week ago and guess what. I can totally hammer these out on the bed.
I have to use a bit of an arm swing to get fully up on any rep after 10, but by golly, CA was right again...but to be fair he never mentioned that this protocol made it an easier move to do.

That guy just never goes out of style.