Sixty-nine, dudes!

[pozorvlak]

They've been giving out "Official British Army Fitness Programme" booklets with the Guardian (and upsetting some of their readers), so last night I had a go at the Army sit-up test - do sit-ups constantly for two minutes, and record your score. Note that these are sit-ups, not trunk curls or stomach crunches or any of that nonsense (those are elsewhere in the booklet). However, you're meant to anchor your feet so you're using your hip flexors.

I managed 69 (with noticeable loss of form after the first minute), which for my age is apparently "very good". "Excellent" would have been 77 or above - I'll hold off applying for the SAS for a bit longer. Actually, since the official website is registration-only, I'll include the relevant bit here:

age	Under 30	30-34	35-39	40-44	45-49
excellent	77+	72+	71+	67+	62+
very good	59-76	55-71	52-70	47-66	43-61
good	50-58	46-54	43-51	37-46	34-42
average	40-49	38-45	33-42	27-36	25-33
poor	0-39	0-37	0-32	0-26	0-24

The instructions are:

When sit ups are performed with the feet anchored by a partner or low object, the hip flexors assist, making the exercise less taxing on your abdominals. Start by lying on the floor with your knees bent and feet anchored. Have your hands across your chest. Maintaining a flat back, curl your head, shoulders and torso off the floor until your torso is in an upright position, then roll back down through the spine to the start position and repeat. Warning: do not perform sit-ups with anchored feet if you suffer from lower back pain. Cease performing sit-ups if you can no longer keep your back flattened and find it is arching off the floor.

Anyone else fancy a go?

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

This is *really* easy for me. I do crunches every day, but even when I did regular situps I could do well over 77 in two minutes time.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

:-)

I do sit-ups every day, but currently only 25 or so (plus various other exercises). Looks like I should push the reps up a bit...

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

I don't do full situps anymore simply because I don't have any good means of comfortably holding down my feet (and because I'm interested in the abdominal part of it- so crunches work more for me), but before I did those yeah, I could whip through situps like nothing. For a long time I was doing 250 crunches a day- I have been building back up to that point again but I'm not there yet. Few more weeks.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Blimey.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

This is just the *one* exercise I really have no problem with. I suppose everyone has one- this one just happens to be mine.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I used to be a lot fitter and stronger than I am now, but then again I used to train 12-15 hours per week.

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

I used to pour bronze five times a day every weekend.

Same concept.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would do it :-)

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Good times, good times.

[susannahf.livejournal.com]

Ditto, although I've been letting it drop recently due to illness / thinking that cycling up Headington Hill and then going swimming is quite enough exercise for one day thankyouverymuch.
Situps are my nemesis exercise. I'd far rather do anything than situps, which probably means I should do more of them... :(

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's one of the things I like about the group of people who read this blog - there are people here like you, who find 77 sit-ups in two minutes to be trivially easy; there are people like me, for whom it's a worthy challenge; and there are people for whom it's just flat-out impossible. And that's true for quite a wide range of tasks. It's a good mix we've got here, I think :-)

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

However I completely fall down where it comes to pushups.

Damned being female and all.

[necaris.livejournal.com]

there are people for whom it's just flat-out impossible

Like me :-)

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

And some going from one to the other, care of labouring for a TfL subcontractor wherein my job involves hauling 25kg bags of track ballast or soil around...

(Hi. Friend of metamoof. Thank you for the maths. Please post more.)

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Hi!

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Erm, that's really ambiguous. Do you maintain a flat back? Or do you curl and roll through your spine? You can't do both at once! Seriously, I have pilates exercises doing each, and they're explicitly mutually exclusive.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Good point. The guy in the picture seems to be curving his back.

[michiexile]

Yeah, umm, I disqualify even before I start.

Y'see, that warning about lower back pain?

Yup. That's me.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Nasty. Can it be treated?

[michiexile]

A lot of it probably would be taken care of if I start actually .. y'know .. moving and stuff. Exercise is a wonderful thing.

Getting to the point where that's viable is one of the reasons I'm currently taking physiotherapy.

Oh, and I'm getting a new office chair, as that seems to have been behind parts of it as well.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Often the case. I used to be in so much more pain (back, hands, shoulders, everywhere) back when I was sitting at a computer for 8+ hours every day.

Good luck with the physio!

[countess-rezia.livejournal.com]

Ooo I get excellent. But that might be because I've been doing 100 of either crunches or sit-ups (almost) every day for 10 years.

If it were press-ups it'd be another story!

[azrelle.livejournal.com]

so this anchoring your feet thing would require having... yanno... a foot that works too?

Tried one out of curiosity... it seems low back pain and those with a drop-foot can't do sit-ups

[tomthejuggler.livejournal.com]

I get lower back pain, and my back arches off the floor, so I probably shouldn't attempt it. I doubt I could do more than 40, though.

Muscles

[aftnn.org (from livejournal.com)]

Interesting titbit: if you do too many feet-flat, knees-bent sit ups it stretches the psoas which in turn can lead to postural changes giving you a nice round beer belly.

I've been reading through Dreas Reyneke's Ultimate Pilates (rubbish name, good book, recommended by my pilates instructor). The first 100 pages are a sort of Physiology 101 and the exercise programme that follows is very carefully broken down to cover the whole body structure.

Plus, couldn't you make 1 more to get a nice round 70!? :-)

Re: Muscles

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

D'oh. OTOH, it would be a Beer Belly of Righteousness :-)

Nice round 70: no, I couldn't do one more, I'd run out of time :-(