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*The below article was written by a good friend of mine-Marty Gallagher-It is one of the most important articles that I have ever read-in fact-I keep it in my work files of my briefcase ( A Rawlings Glove Briefcase to be exact) and re-read it at least once a month-the decline (or incline) sit-up has become MY main ab move and with very impressive results.
Keith
Decline sit-ups with a twist
By Marty Gallagher
Sounds like an exotic drink, one with a little umbrella placed inside a lightly salted rim. This is a vicious gut exercise that purposeful primitives gravitate towards because, well, because its a vicious gut exercise and given a choice between easy and difficult, well opt for difficult every single time. Crunches are handy and convenient and isolative and delicate and precise and thats why they are not all that great for the intended purpose; build and strengthen the abdominal muscles from crotch to solar plexus, including the external oblique muscles, the intercostals and serratus. Crunches have a tiny range-of-motion (ROM) and rely on continuous tension to impart the stress inroad.
Decline sit-ups are difficult, quite cumbersome, compound multi-jointed, hardly delicate and require all the muscles of the abdominal region work together in an elongated and coordinated fashion in order to finish the assigned muscular task. So what is a decline sit-up? A bench with a downward slanting surface allows the athlete to double the range-of-motion (ROM) over the standard sit-up or crunch. This bio-mechanical fact-of-life also doubles the results and benefits. Most commercial exercises benches sold in this day and age have the ability to incline, allowing the user to do incline presses, curls; 90-degree braced seated overhead presses plus all manner of flat bench exercises.
Most modern exercise benches also have the ability to decline, to allow the bench surface slant down and allow the athlete to lie braced with the head below the flat plane surface. This feature allows the user to perform decline bench presses (without a spotter and using a barbell this is a dangerous, needless, redundant exercise that should be exorcised from every PP training regimen) but we have a far better use. Hook your feet under and around the leg(s) of the bench (some have a special foot attachment) and lean back, slowly, totally, until the back of your head touches the bench pad. Now sit erect in a slow purposeful fashion.
This device and procedure combine to create one of the most excruciating stomach exercises ever devised. The decline creates a dramatically extended ROM and a longer rep stroke pre-stretches the gut; first stretching the stomach then making it contract over the furthest possible pathway. When a purposeful primitive hears the word excruciating used to describe an exercise, their ears immediately prick and they are drawn to the exercise like a starving bear to a bee hive. The modern decline sit-up is the grandchild of the infamous Roman Chair sit-up used incessantly by the great bodybuilders of the golden, relatively innocent era of the late 60s and early 70s.
Men like Frank Zane, Irving Zabo Koszewski, Dave Draper, Sergio Oliva, Franco, Arnold, Danny Padilla and all the other physique immortals of that era would typically start or finish their regular weight workout with 100-reps of Roman Chair sit-up. The feet were held down by two floor stirrups and a padded bar was placed under the butt/hamstrings a few feet off the floor. The user would then sit or arch backwards before sitting erect. Zane reportedly could do 500 non-stop reps and Zabo supposedly could do them at a steady pace for a solid hour. ROM combined with slow rep speed is the key to our version. The more space you can insert between the start and finish of a rep stroke the more muscles have to be involved. We like a slow rep speed.
Technically there are a long list of proper provisos and proceduresno bouncing off the pad at the bottom of the repetition to create momentum. Use a slow and controlled lowering of the torso; uncoil one vertebra at a time in reverse order. At the very bottom, lightly touch the back of your head to the pad and then sit erect using the identical rep speed used in lowering. Roll up in a very deliberate and concentrated fashion. Stop the rep at the exact instant when stomach tension releases then with great deliberateness reverse direction and head back down. If you can do 10-reps first try in this ultra-concentrated fashion, youre a terminator. Once you are able to do 20-reps using the straight up and straight down procedure, switch to twist. At the commencement of every rep, turn as far as you can in one direction. Hold this twisted position as you sit up. Use the identical slow-mo rep speed. This variation produces an unbelievable isolation and stimulation of the external oblique muscles the muscles that lie beneath the love handles. At the bottom of the subsequent rep, twist in the other direction as far as possible and repeat the procedure.
For those seeking admittance into the Little Rascal He Man Club (sorry ladies!) do your decline sit-ups holding your hands overhead, like you were showing off on the rollercoaster. If you are a power god, hold a dumbbell overhead with your extended arms. Ultimately try the dumbbell version with a twist. Delightfully diabolical. Please write in with any personal experiences
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