Is supine leg lift harmful to the lumbar spine?

Lie on your back and raise your legs is a common fitness method, which is very effective in improving the waist and abdominal muscles. When doing lie on your back and raise your legs, you must learn some formal methods to avoid adverse effects on the lumbar spine due to some incorrect movements, and even easily lead to strain. In this regard, you must pay attention to avoid some misunderstandings in movements. Let us learn about it below.

Is supine leg lift harmful to the lumbar spine?

Action Misunderstanding 1: Should the hands be crossed behind the head?

When doing sit-ups, many people cross their hands behind their heads, but in fact, holding the head with both hands can easily hurt the cervical vertebrae. Because the human cervical spine has a natural curve, doing sit-ups with your hands on your head will put tremendous pressure on the cervical spine, which may cause injury to the cervical spine. If you do sit-ups with your hands on your head for a long time, it may also cause cervical spondylosis. Therefore, it is recommended that people place their hands on both sides of their ears or cross them in front of their chest when doing sit-ups.

Action Mistake 2: Keep your legs together and straight, and use external force to fix your feet

The editor of the lumbar curvature found that most people take this posture with their legs when doing sit-ups. But in fact, straightening the legs and fixing the feet will cause the legs and waist to be mobilized to a greater extent due to increased force, and the abdomen will not be able to fully exert its strength. Doing so is not only unhelpful for abdominal muscle training, but may also aggravate the condition of people with back injuries. The correct way is to keep the thigh and calf, i.e. the knee joint, at an angle of about 45 degrees and keep it relaxed.

Action Mistake 3: When standing up, the chest and thighs are too close

When doing sit-ups, if the chest and thighs are in too much contact when standing up, the movement often requires too much range of motion, which will involve many other muscles in the body, not just the abdominal muscles. Therefore, during the entire sit-up process, there is no need to bring the chest into close contact with the legs. An angle of about 45 degrees between the two is most appropriate.