Working out...

[danieru72]

when u do situps is it better to put ur hands behind ur head or arms across chest? or is there a difference?

[theOperaGhost]

Moved from P101 to The 4th Wall Sports Section.

I'm not actually sure which would be better. The best technique for doing crunches is to interlock your fingers, put your hands behind your head, and keep your elbows out, basically parallel to the floor at the beginning of your crunch. Not positive if a sit-up would be exactly the same or not.

[Bobby]

A sit-up, in my eyes, is when you have your feet and back on the ground in the begining, and your arms behind your head. Then you lift your back with your feet staying on the floor. With your hands behind you head and your feet in the air, it's more of a crunch.

This is a crunch:
http://epicself.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/crunch.jpg

This is a sit-up:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40830000/gif/_40830568_full_sit_up.gif

[serial-thrilla]

yep, crunches are alot harder. Don't expect to be able to see your 6 pack though. You need to do alot of cardio as well.

[khaos14]

Putting your hands behind your head can result in an accidental stressing of the vertebrae. (Not fun) It's safest to cross your arms over your chest with your hands near your collar bone or shoulders. Shoulders are best because you can hold onto them as you're exercising. Most people don't care what variation you do, so it's fine just to do them with your hands on your shoulders most of the time. :)

[CaptainObvious]

Behind the head would be harder, though not necessarily better. Why? Because when you do a situp you're essentially using your abdominal muscles to provide torque to rotate your upper body upwards. Torque is proportional to the length from the axis of rotation (your hips, more or less) to the center of gravity of the object being rotated. With arms behind your head, the center of gravity of your upper body moves towards your head, increasing the necessary torque and thus how hard the exercise is.

That said, it won't be a particularly big difference, and as already noted crossing your arms over your chest may be safer.

[JoshDude]

Both. I believe when you find it hard to do situps with your hands behind you head, you should do them with your arms across your chest. I do not know if this is true.

[Θάνατος]

Putting your hands behind your head can result in an accidental stressing of the vertebrae. (Not fun) It's safest to cross your arms over your chest with your hands near your collar bone or shoulders. Shoulders are best because you can hold onto them as you're exercising. Most people don't care what variation you do, so it's fine just to do them with your hands on your shoulders most of the time. :)


This is very true don't put you hands behind your head to do sit ups. You can and will hurt your neck because most people will pull on their neck to help with the sit up.

Putting you arms across your chest also makes it harder for you to do the sit up thus making you abdominal muscle work harder.

[CaptainObvious]

Putting you arms across your chest also makes it harder for you to do the sit up thus making you abdominal muscle work harder.

This is wrong. Putting arms across the chest is safer, but not harder, as I explained very clearly above.

[Galendale7170]

You're not meant to put ur hands behind ur head in case u stress ur neck, hands on temples or across the chest is best. Trying to keep ur feet flat on the ground makes it harder too

[Markie_G]

knees in the air, fingerslocked behind head. and do crunches. i heard this way is good.