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  • 9 hours ago


GHD Sit-Ups: Technique & Efficiency

The Glute Ham Developer (GHD) Sit-Up is an advanced core exercise designed to build strength, stability, and explosive power. Unlike traditional sit-ups, this movement places the body in a greater range of motion, activating the hip flexors, rectus abdominis, obliques, and spinal stabilizers.

Technique:

1. Setup – Adjust the GHD machine so your hips extend slightly beyond the pad.


2. Starting Position – Sit upright with feet secured under the footplate, knees slightly bent.


3. Lowering Phase – Slowly lower your torso backward until it is parallel to the ground (or slightly beyond, depending on mobility).


4. Engagement – Keep your core tight, avoid overextending your spine.


5. Ascent – Contract your abs and hip flexors to pull yourself back up to the starting position.


6. Breathing – Inhale while lowering, exhale while rising.



Efficiency & Benefits:

Builds explosive core strength.

Improves hip flexor endurance.

Enhances spinal stability for heavy lifting.

Transfers power to sports movements like sprinting and jumping.

Highly effective for CrossFit athletes and advanced lifters.


⚠️ Caution: Beginners should progress gradually, as excessive range of motion can strain the lower back and hip flexors if not controlled.

1. #GHDSitUps


2. #CoreStrength


3. #FitnessTechnique


4. #CrossFitTraining


5. #AbWorkout


6. #StrengthTraining


7. #AthleteConditioning


8. #FunctionalFitness


9. #GymExercises


10. #FitnessTips

Category

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Learning
Transcript
00:00Okay, so today we're going to be talking GHD sit-up technique.
00:04We've got Coach Chris here with us.
00:06And so there's really four things that I think about here.
00:09Arm action, leg action, vision, and breathing.
00:12So let's start with the limbs, arms and legs.
00:15So go ahead and jump in there, Chris.
00:16We already got the GHD set up to approximately where I like it
00:20and where Chris feels comfortable, so this is good.
00:23We did that in a previous video, so check that out.
00:25However, assuming we got this set up correctly,
00:27just go ahead and go through a couple reps
00:28and we'll just kind of pay attention to what his arms and legs are actually doing.
00:33You can see his knee kind of pushes down right through the middle of the range there.
00:36If you watch his arms, the arms stay straight the entire time.
00:40Go ahead and relax.
00:42So the knees are sort of a point of debate, even between us two a little bit.
00:47However, there's one thing in particular that is super important,
00:50and that's that you maintain speed through the middle portion of the movement.
00:53So if at any point where you have the most gravity working against you,
00:57which is sort of when you're parallel or perpendicular with the ground,
01:00or parallel with the ground, that's going to be really bad.
01:03Like that's an expensive position to be in.
01:05So you want to get through that as quickly as you can.
01:07Whether that means driving your knees down so that you can, again,
01:11kind of accelerate your way through that portion of the movement, that's totally fine.
01:15If that means maintaining a similar knee position the entire way
01:18and just really thinking about being active through that, that's totally fine too.
01:21However, you want to make sure that you're moving quickly through that middle portion of the range.
01:25The arm straight is something that we've seen from a lot of the elite athletes
01:29that we think is super important and something that more people should mimic
01:33versus laying back like this.
01:34You want to try to do a couple reps like that where you really exaggerate the arms,
01:38laying back and bending a lot.
01:40So what that's doing is it's making the moment arm of this movement longer,
01:44and it's being more expensive.
01:46There's more of an eccentric catch at the bottom.
01:48That's way more of an expensive way to do it.
01:50If you see a lot of the elites who've done a lot of GHDs,
01:53most of them keep their arms really straight.
01:55However, they keep it as close to basically below this position right here the entire time.
02:04They don't come way up over the top.
02:06It's more like a snow angel where it's out and around,
02:09and they keep those hands in really nice and tight.
02:12So that's the arms and the legs.
02:14Next is vision.
02:15So when you end with a movement, you either want to look forward
02:18or maybe at the foot pads, somewhere sort of neutral where it keeps your head in alignment.
02:23And when you lay back, it's the same thing.
02:25You want to keep that chin tucked.
02:26The last thing you want to do is look back at the wall behind you or at the floor.
02:30The floor will be there.
02:31It's not going to move, right?
02:33You want to make sure that you're doing everything that you can to maintain that same head position
02:36where you're not changing and altering it a lot.
02:38So go ahead and just go through a couple reps again.
02:41Yep, good ones.
02:42I just want you to see where his chin position is.
02:45We were talking about this.
02:46You can almost see your own belly button when you're looking in the direction that you're looking.
02:50So you're looking almost up at the ceiling, maybe forward a little bit.
02:52Now go ahead and just do one or two where you're looking back when you do it.
02:56It's really dizzying.
02:58It's not a comfortable thing to do.
03:00It feels much less sustainable overall.
03:02Okay.
03:03And then lastly would be the breathing.
03:05In general, you want to inhale as you lay back where you're losing that tension.
03:09And right as you go to catch tension, you're going to hold your breath for half a second.
03:12Maybe not half a second, but you know.
03:14And you'll sit up.
03:15And as you sit up and you become detentioned, that's when you'll exhale.
03:19If you get super exhausted when you're doing these where your rate of the actual GHD starts to slow down
03:25and you're at a really high just work rate overall.
03:29In other words, you're starting to slow down.
03:31You're super fatigued in the workout.
03:32Maybe you just got off another really taxing piece.
03:34You might have to take an exhale, an inhale, an exhale, and an inhale again as you sit up.
03:40So in other words, two breaths at the top of each movement.
03:43Because either way, you're still going to have to kind of hold your breath in the bottom.
03:46However, for elite competitors, they probably also have elite fitness.
03:49They don't necessarily need to do that.
03:50They can usually maintain one breath for each rep of the GHD.
03:54And that's a pretty sustainable thing.
03:55And they can also move through the reps pretty quickly.
03:57So it's not something where they're going to get bottlenecked in that way.
04:01So that's GHD tips.

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