Do abdominal exercises make your back hurt? They shouldn’t. If you find that your back is sore after doing a series of abdominal exercises (either immediately after or a day or two later), you may want to check to see if you back is gripping while you are doing them.
Here are several tips for helping you learn how to use your abdominals (instead of other muscles) while doing ab exercises (sometimes called crunches or sit ups)
Step One:
Re-educate your body to learn how to find your abdominals without recruiting other, more dominant, muscle groups.
Often when one has weak abdominal muscles, the hip flexor muscles (the muscles at the front of your hip) and back muscles will overwork. Remove the additional challenge of holding your legs in the air, and instead, cue your hips and back to relax.
To do this, place a thick pillow on the ground in front of you and drape your legs over the pillow (or arc). Then actively tell your back and hip muscles to “let go.” You may notice that your back falls into a slight curve so that there is a space between your back and the floor. See if you can maintain this curve during your sit-up and still keep your back and hips quiet! When you do this correctly, you should feel that your abdominals are working more effectively.
Step Two:
The second step is to see if you can do the same thing with your legs up in the air in a supported position. You could do this by placing your legs over a ball (this will be harder since it is an unstable surface). If you need a surface that provides more stability, put your legs over a coffee table or other surface.
Step Three:
The last step is to see if you apply this to having your legs in the air without support. In this position, your hip flexors will have to work in order to hold your legs up against gravity, and your back may need to be placed firmly on the floor (instead of having a curve in it), but your back should still not be working and, overall, you should feel that there is more balance between your abdominals and hip flexors.
Once you have this skill, you should be able to apply it to other abdominal exercises that require more complex movement with your arms and legs.
Good luck.
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This is good stuff, Leslie! I really appreciate the reminder about being mindful of the back muscles and hip flexors which so often take over for me and my clients when trying to recruit the deep abs. This is well explained and very useful in applying the Pilates breathing and core support whether I am attempting it or teaching it to my clients. Thanks.