Otis-Up

🎯 Abdominals🏋️ OtherBeginnerCompoundChest (2°)Shoulders (2°)Triceps (2°)

How to do the otis-up

  1. Secure your feet and lay back on the floor. Your knees should be bent. Hold a weight with both hands to your chest. This will be your starting position.
  2. Initiate the movement by flexing the hips and spine to raise your torso up from the ground.
  3. As you move up, press the weight up so that it is above your head at the top of the movement.
  4. Return the weight to your chest as you reverse the sit-up motion, ensuring not to go all the way down to the floor.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rectus abdominis and the obliques, which flex the trunk forward and resist it being pulled into extension or twisted out of line.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the chest adds pushing force at the shoulder; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range; the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:AbdominalsChestShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

These train the abdominals too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 97 abdominals exercises in this database, 69 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.