UKC

Five weeks ago I did some damage to myself while doing twisting leg raises, which I've since learned are a pretty good way of doing yourself harm.

I've had a sonograph/ultrasound scan, and the doctor said that there's a minor muscular hernia on the left side about 5cm above my groin; just a widening of the gap between muscles. I'm not in pain, and the doctor advised me to ignore it unless it becomes painful.

Now, I don't want to lose the fitness or core strength I've built up. Does anyone know of any exercises I could do that won't put excessive strain on the lower abdominal muscles?

Thanks,

Matt

In reply to nikkormat:

As a general rule isometric exercises are considered safer than movement based exercise. Not sure which would be best to avoid lower abs but there are a ton of isometric core exercises like plank variations, side planks, L sits, V sits, superman, and progressing into things like planches, levers etc. These will all be safer still if you back off on intensity and focus on perfect form until you feel able to push harder.

Also worth considering that you might not want to avoid lower ab stuff completely. If you do then you'll end up with a weak area relative to the rest of your core and that will be more susceptible to injury when you start training harder again.

For movement based exercise windshield wipers don't seem very lower ab intensive. Not so sure about hanging wipers though. Check Youtube. Lots of good trainer videos many of which are very specific about the muscles each exercise trains.

In reply to stp:

Thanks stp, that was exactly the kind of information I was after. I'll check out some of those exercises.

I'll give it a month or two before I try anything new with the lower abs, just hoping it settles down a bit in that time.