get better at SITUPS

theres this testing thing i do at school, and i have to do 50 reps in a ROW!!!!

its pretty hard for me :(..... how can i improve these? they're a struggle :(

Do you have to do the kind where someone holds your feet and you have to sit all the way up? I hate those. They are old-school and counterproductive.

You can start strengthening your abs doing crunches on the floor, where you don't come all the way up. Make sure you really use your stomach muscles and you aren't pulling up on your neck. Try to break the 50 into pieces -- do 20 and 20 and then 10 with rests in between, and then build up to more than that (maybe aim for two reps of 50 crunches in a row) so that the 50 full sit ups won't feel like much when you do the test.

To see how you're doing on the sit-all-the-way-up kind, try and find something in your house to hook your feet under, like a banister or a sturdy couch.

Good luck :)

Definitely don't pull on your neck...that is a good way to hurt yourself.

And almost always, the best way to get better at bodyweight exercises like this is to do more of them.  Do them 3-5 days a week, start with as many as you can do without feeling completely spent and do 3 sets of that number with about 1-2 minute rest in between sets.  Just keep doing them and when you feel you can do more in the first set, start doing more and increase all sets to the new number.  Just keep doing this until you reach the goal.  As corduroy said above, it's not the most effective abdominal exercise, but if you have to do it, plain old sets of reps will get you there.

Good luck!

presidential physical fitness exam? i always despised that... until i got good at it, then i loved showing off how good i was. lol

i wish the people that made up these programs realized how pointless and easy to mess up sit-ups are.

sorry i don't have any advice. lol good luck!

A similar test is used in the military, you're graded based on how many sit-ups you can perform consecutively within one minute *rolls eyes*. Sit-ups are archaic at best and I think people end up working more with momentum than with their abs.

 And the best way to strengthen your entire core is to use it for what it's for - bracing your trunk against an external load. As in squats, deadlifts, cable woodchops, Pallof presses, that sort of thing.

 But sometimes you have to train to the test, and not for what makes sense anatomically, and the way to do that is to follow the program sbarbe outlined for you.