Why Sit-Ups are So BAD for Osteoporosis (do THIS instead)

so the other day I had a client of mine that has osteoporosis and she was told that she should never do sit-ups but she wasn't quite sure why she shouldn't do sit-ups and so then I thought well maybe there's other people out there that have osteoporosis that also have the same question that like you know I kind of know why but I don't know why so in this video it's going to be short but in this video I'm going to tell you why you really shouldn't do some of the traditional exercises like sit-ups and Russian twists and vits if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis but I'll also give you alternatives to where you can safely strengthen up your core hey everyone welcome to channel Ed Deo physical therapist from integrated physical therapy in beautiful sunny Bellingham Washington so if you've been to the channel before if you've seen some of my videos on osteoporosis you know I talk a lot about the anterior part of the vertebral body losing bone mass density now this is the front and this is the back so what happens is if we start to lose bone mass density through the front of these vertebrae they naturally start to want to bend forward and collapse into what we call a wedge fracture and the resulting posture ends up being an excessive kyphosis of your thoracic spine one of the things that we really want to make sure that you do and I recommend this two to three minutes every day and passively working on extension and for some people that's just going to be lying down for other people it might be putting a small rolled up towel or something underneath to get a little bit more of an extension component of your thoracic spine because it's really important to kind of combat that forward shoulder and rounded spine that all of us get but especially if you have low bone mass density I'll put a video link right up here to a video I just did that goes into a little bit more detail of different ways in which you can work on passive thoracic spine extension remember 2 to 3 minutes per day when it comes to strength training we really stress proper form and the reason is is because think about strength training as reinforcing that movement pattern into the body so for example let's say you are doing some squats and you have a habit of one knee collapsing in if you are not really cognizant of that what's going to happen is that knee collapsing in is going to be your regular pattern every time you Squat and over a long period of time that could create some stress at the knee as well as at the medial part of the foot so strength training is really critical but we have to make sure we're doing it with proper form because it reinforces that posture now example imagine if someone is lying down doing a bunch of sit-ups and they're repeatedly flexing their spine maybe through a vit or they're doing Russian Twists where they're flexing a little bit and then they're rotating their spine all those movements create a significant amount of stress on the front part of this vertebral spine remember where already some people are compromised the other thing that's doing is if I'm doing a bunch of crunches right the posture that I'm reinforcing to my central nervous system is this I'm saying look I want to be tight I want to be Turtle down and through here rather than opening up through the chest I'm promoting this kind of thoracic kyphosis that I'm trying to work so hard to get out of so what is the solution the solution is to strengthen your spine in neutral so what is neutral if you look at someone from the side ideally they've got a little curve for your neck a mild thoracic spine curve and then a little bit of a curve of the lumbar spine and this is where you want to strengthen up your spine in neutral so what does that look like it could be a front plank it could be variations of a side plank you could also be laying flat on your back and doing some rectus abdominis work I'll put another link right up here to a video that I did that is specifically dedicated to core strengthening if you have osteoporosis and modifications because I also understand there's some people that can't do a front plank or a side plank maybe they got a shoulder injury or something like that but it's critical that we work on core strengthening but safely if you would like to learn more about osteoporosis I will be putting together an online educational course coming up soon so please check out our Facebook group I'll put a link down below because that's where I'm going to have the details to the class the class is going to be limited to a number of participants just so that I can kind of give people individualized attention so make sure that you get on there and keep an eye out for the class because once I announce it registration will be open all right everyone thank you for watching also if you enjoyed the video please consider subscribing and sending this video to your friends so you never miss another one of our videos all right everyone take care and we'll see at the next video