<p>True, but perhaps the bigger problem is the almost complete absence of form to the mid-section.</p>
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<p>Goodness. Don’t kill yourself. </p>
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<p>Is that where all the old ladies get it?</p>
<p>Joking aside, traditional abdominal exercises are quite ineffective. The back is not meant to bend forward over and over. One can get around that by strengthening the muscles associated with exercises like planks, in which one endeavors to keep the back straight.</p>
<p>Hahaha, very funny.
Anyway, does it mean that sit ups are bad if you bend your back while doing it?</p>
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<p>I’d avoid them for that reason, but there are plenty of others. Using crunches or sit-ups to work the abdominals is akin to curling one’s hand in order to build a bicep. If you must do crunches — which is what you’d want to do, as full sit-ups are more of a workout for the hip flexors — do them on a machine for that purpose, and add enough weight so that you can only comfortably complete around eight reps. Otherwise, I’d stick with planks. They’re a lot more rigorous and a lot less painful for the back.</p>
<p>oh my gosh. planks are torture…</p>
<p>I thought this thread was going to be about driving or something. I’m leaving now.</p>
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<p>o.o
I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Right now I’m just trying to lose weight. After I have lost a sufficient amount of weight I’ll start worrying about my midsection, and I guess I be exploring alternate exercises (rather than push-ups). </p>
<p>Anyway, I’d just like to add that I’m glad that I took the courses I did. It wasn’t just that our schedules coincided. Some of my teachers instilled in me a certain ideology. My philosophy teacher was especially influential; he kept emphasizing the need to seize the moment in the beginning of the course. The existentialist unit was similarly eye-opening; my teacher introduced the concept of existential ethics, and as I did my own self-study, I became increasingly mesmerized by the ethical code of the existentialist - the only right thing to do is that you really want to do. It’s not what other people tell you to do, or what society implies that you should do. The only way to correctly live - to live authentically - is to blaze your own path. In that vein, I stopped worrying about certain physical limits and bounds (to a certain extent). Who cares about what a piteous parent might think. What matters is what I think, and what I want. And so, I found myself living somewhat authentically - or at least more authentically than I ever did.</p>
<p>I love existentialism, but it’s so fun to moralize that I can’t embrace the philosophy fully. I am content blazing my own path, but I’d love it if everyone else were to follow behind me.</p>