Healthy Sit-ups for the Neck
Little known fact: Sit-ups are not a neutral spine conditioning exercise. They are a core stability exercise but do not strengthen the abdominals in a way that help you maintain neutral spine alignment. Curl-ups on the other hand do help you stabilize your rib cage in a way that promotes healthy spine alignment. Let’s break it down!
The Problem:
Technology has us spending too much time in collapsedposture. Traditional sit-ups strengthen your ability to collapse your upper back. They are hard to do without forward head posture and if done improperly you can strengthen the faulty loading patterns that cause neck pain. Additionally, a sit-up usually incorporates hip flexors and momentum to complete the movement.
The Solution:
A modified sit-up that only incorporates the upper body and not the hip flexors is called a Curl-up. It strengthens the upper abdominals similar to a curl up but with the pelvis remaining in neutral. A curl-up can be done without forward head posture.
Summary:
Adding Curl-ups to your neutral spine based functional fitness program can add variety to your core stability program that is in line with your goals of functioning from healthy posture.
We developed the Healthy Posture System to provide you with all the video resources to safely restore your ability to function from neutral spine alignment. There are many strategies you will learn as you progress through the program to help you keep your upper back stacked throughout the day. At level 4 of the program, you will be asked to add online coaching to your subscription to ensure you learn themore difficult exercises without faulty loading.
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