Tailbone hurts when doing sit ups

Of course, if you've had a tailbone or lower spine injury in the past, you'll be more likely to suffer with this specific type of pain. Still, anyone at risk for poor posture or a lack of cushioning can experience a sore tailbone while doing situps. Improper posture is usually the first culprit when solving the mystery of coccyx pain. During a perfectly executed situp, your tailbone should not bear the weight of your body. Instead, when you move from the rest position into a situp, you only need to lift your upper back off of the floor, allowing your lower back to protect your tailbone.

This engages the abdominal muscles without extra pain and pressure on the coccyx. If you do choose to sit all the way up until your chest meets your knees, you're at a higher risk for spine and tailbone pain and likely need better cushioning.

If you're sure that your posture is perfect when executing a situp, but you're still experiencing pain, your tailbone is likely the victim of a lack of cushioning.

Doing situps on a bare, hard floor presses your spine along an unforgiving surface. The solution is to invest in a thick, foam exercise mat to help reduce the pressure placed on the back and tailbone. Or, grab an exercise ball and do situps while reclined on the ball instead. Read more: The 41 Hardest Ab Exercises. Sit-ups don't have to be performed on the floor. Perform them on a stability ball to protect your tailbone and, as a bonus, you'll also get more activation for your abs. A full sit-up puts more pressure on your tailbone, making you uncomfortable.

Sitting up all the way may not be the most effective way to train your abs either — so modify them to both save your tailbone and get a better workout. When you do a sit-up, you're using significant assistance from your hip flexors rather than just working your abs. Crunches , however, leave the hip flexors mostly out of the exercise.

To do a crunch, lift your head, neck and shoulders off the floor. Your abs work most when you lift up 30 to 45 degrees. Read more: Straight-Leg Situps. If you just can't escape tailbone pain or don't have a tailbone cushion for your sit-ups, consider ditching the floor and flexing your spine from a standing position.

Fitness Workouts Ab Exercises. Aubrey Bailey is a Doctor of Physical Therapy with an additional degree in psychology and board certification in hand therapy. Bailey is also an Anatomy and Physiology professor.

Andrea Boldt. When you're going really fast, or you're fatiguing, odds are your hips are going to be lifting up at the bottom position, then slamming down on the rubber floor to help create momentum to complete the sit-up. This is a great way to go fast with less effort, but you're also creating tons of rubbing and friction on the small of your back, leading to the stingy, burning sore on your butt.

Keep your hips and low back locked to the floor, or just be willing to pay the price in the shower the next few days. Core Stability Fix: Same action, different reason.

If you're moving slowly through sit-ups, and you're not kipping your hips to get that momentum, but you're still getting the monkey butt sore, it's like due to your inability to resist core extension arching of your low back when laying down on your back. Every time you go down in your sit-up, you low back arches and puts extra force on the small of your back where the rubber meets your butt.

Then when you go to sit-up, that arching extraneously drags your skin across the rubber floor. Quick Fix: Do sit-ups on the turf or on a yoga mat. These are simply surfaces that won't rub as much on your skin. Long-Term Fix: Dead bugs!