Tip of the Week: Perfecting the Bikram Sit Up

On a previous post "Tip of the Week: The Sit Up", we discussed the following:

Raise your arms over your head, cross only your thumbs with your palms facing the ceiling. Flex your feet and contract your leg muscles. Inhale and contract your abdominal/core muscles. Exhale and press the lower part of your spine to the floor (this will help to protect your back and actually make it easier to come up), and reach "up" as you sit up, keeping your legs straight and your heels on floor. Grab the big toes with your first two fingers and lay your whole body out flat on your legs, touching forehead to knees (it's important to touch forehead to knees as this the compression part). Touch the floor on either side with your elbows and stretch forward twice. Double jerk, double exhale. Note that this is one of the few times when you are exhaling through your mouth and not your nose. Try to stretch further and further with each sit up you do.


Our extra tips for today are:

*Keep your arms with your ears the entire time.

*Glue your heels to the ground the entire time.

*Instead of reaching straight up and doing a "pike" before coming down, which can be uncomfortable on the lower back, reach up but come straight forward toward the toes in one smooth movement.

*Before you begin the sit up, take one long deep inhale and hold the breath in until you get to the forward bend, and then double exhale. The sit up should be one continuous motion, as opposed to sitting up, and then stretching forward in a separate breath.

*Please note that the Bikram sit ups energize and empower you. The more seriously you take the sit ups, the harder you exhale, the more energy you will have for your next posture.