Recently I was invited through Facebook to join in some friends on a ‘fun’ challenge to spend 30 days working on my abdominals. Granted I am not one to back down from a challenge lightly so I said ok and started on June 1st and just finished the challenge yesterday.
The challenges I find out are more than just abdominals though. They have any and every type of challenge that you can imagine. So I will be spending the next few months going through a few of them and discussing the pros/cons of each challenge as well as my thoughts on how this might benefit some and hinder others.
30 Day Abdominal Challenge
Pros of the challenge
This was well-thought out in some ways. 3 days and then break, 3 days and then break. I thought that the individual who came up with this challenge was considerate of the fact that you need to rest your muscles, even your abs.
The choice of the exercises was interesting as well. I would have liked something to target the oblique as well, but one could always do a sit-up with a twist if they so desired. I know that I changed up the leg raises to add a hip lift at the end making it target my lower abdominals in a different way. Planks was a nice way to end each day since it was an isometric exercise after the muscles were fatigued.
Cons of the challenge
I thought that towards the end of the challenge that I hoped that no one who was just getting into exercise was attempting to do this non-stop. 125 sit-ups followed by 200 crunches is incredibly difficult and even I took the challenge and broke it into 50 rep sections with a small rest period in between.
I also thought about fatigue being an issue here. Pushing the muscles that much could weaken the abdominal wall creating risk of hernias, etc.
Conclusion
Bottom line is that none of these ‘challenges’ should be taken as a substitution for actual exercise. When you are considering whether or not you want to take on one of these challenges, just make sure that you are aware of the limitations of them. They are akin to you betting yourself and your friends to see if you have the will power. But they can also introduce someone who might be off the exercise wagon back into the idea of pursuing health. It might just give a person that motivation to make the change permanent.
fitnessafter20 