Technique:
- Lie face up on the floor with your arms alongside the body and the legs fully extended or bent slightly in the knees.
- When you are ready, inhale and hold your breath as you keep the legs in position and raise them while you simultaneously raise the arms and trunk
- Raise the legs until they are approximately at a 45? angle and the trunk also up to a 45? angle.
- In the ending position, your legs and trunk should form a 90? angle with the hands close to or slightly beyond the feet.
- When you are adept at doing this exercise, the angle between the trunk and legs can be much less.
- Exhale and lower the legs and trunk simultaneously back to the original position.
- Pause momentarily and then repeat.
- Initiate the up movement with a powerful contraction of the muscles to help overcome inertia and to reach the upper position.
Performance:
- Be sure to hold your breath as you rotate your trunk and legs up and toward each other. This gives you greater force and creates greater intra-abdominal pressure to help protect your spine. If you exhale on the up phase, you will be weaker and more susceptible to injury. In addition, you will not be able to reach the uppermost position where your body forms the letter V when viewed from the side. The V-seat is a difficult exercise and may require a slight learning curve, especially in regard to your balance. For greater success, try to raise the legs and upper body simultaneously keeping both fairly rigid with the axis in the hips. If you lose your balance and fall backwards onto your shoulders, it usually means that your legs came up too fast and too high before the trunk. Thus, try to concentrate more on getting the trunk up prior to or together with the legs.
- Your arms play an important role in balance. By shooting your arms upward and in front they help get more weight over the hips and to give a stronger thrust to the trunk which is typically much heavier than the legs and requires more force.
- Adjust your eyes focus as you move through the exercise. When in a back lying position, look directly upward. But as you execute the V-seat, your eyes focus should be directed more toward the raised feet.