With the thousands of exercise variations out there, it can be quite confusing to choose which one will suit you the best. When it comes to training abs and the core in general, there is one specific exercise that comes into everyone’s mind and that is considered a “must” in every core training routine. I’m talking, of course, about sit-ups. It’s a classic exercise that continuously appears in the majority of workouts since it provides a lot of benefits. There are some people who think that one of these benefits is the fact that sit-ups increase height, is that really the case?
There is no direct connection between sit-ups and height so this exercise won’t increase it nor stunt growth. The only thing that controls height is genetics, surrounding environment, malnutrition, and certain diseases.
In this article, we’ll talk more in-depth about if sit-ups increase height and if they affect growth in any other way.
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Do Sit-Ups Increase Height?
In order to answer this question, I’ll follow two approaches, one based on my own experience and the other based on pure logic.
Based on My Experience
As a little backstory, ever since I was a kid, I always struggled with being extremely skinny. That’s why I decided to join the gym and kickstart my own body transformation journey.
3 years later, I managed to pack on 40+ pounds of muscles and I’ve never looked better in my life. I know what you’re thinking, what does this have to do with sit-ups and height?
Here is the deal, when I started going to the gym, I rarely trained my abs since I naturally had them. It was only after 2 years that I decided to get serious in terms of core training and that’s when I started regularly doing sit-ups. At that point, I was 18 and 6 foot 1 tall.
Fast forward to a year of almost daily sit-up exercises, I was 19 and still 6 foot 1. As you can see, nothing changed in terms of my height, it didn’t increase even by an inch. My abs got rock solid though, but my height, not so much.
This means that, based on my own experience, sit-ups don’t affect height whatsoever.
Based On Logic
So now you know that my height didn’t change even though I was regularly doing sit-ups. However, maybe that was only the case for me, maybe other people will have a different experience. In order to get rid of any uncertainty, let’s try to take a different approach.
When you think about sit-ups, you automatically think about weight-lifting and training, now let me ask you a question, what’s considered the peak of weight-lifting? It’s when you become a professional bodybuilder and get on stage.
I’m sure that you’ve already seen how big they all are and how impressive their muscles look, especially their abs. And I’m also sure that those abs didn’t come easy or naturally, they worked really hard and put countless hours in the gym to make them look that way. Since sit-ups are a common exercise among bodybuilders, there is a good chance that they were regularly doing them.
If we take a look at the height of all Mr.Olympia (which is the biggest bodybuilding competition out there) winners, you’ll notice something very interesting. Their average height was about 5 feet 7 inches, which is shorter than the average American man that is 5 feet 9 tall. Except for a tiny minority like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Ronnie Coleman, all professional bodybuilders are pretty short.
If sit-ups really increased height, then the majority of them will at the very least be above 6 feet which is not the case here. This means that sit-ups do not increase height whatsoever.
According to the Journal of Biosocial Science, the only thing that controls height is genetics, the surrounding environment, nutrition, and diseases.
Do Sit-Ups Stunt Height?
There is no evidence that proves that an exercise done regularly and moderately will stunt your height, and that’s the same for sit-ups. In fact, this is only a rumor that has been spread by overprotective parents and “gurus” on the internet because they notice that the majority of bodybuilders are short. While that last statement is true, it doesn’t mean that they’re short because of bodybuilding. That’s their natural height and even if they didn’t start weight-lifting in the first place, they’ll probably have the same height by now.
As I mentioned in the beginning, the only thing that controls height is genetics, nutrition, and diseases. The only time where bodybuilding and training can affect your height is the case of a spinal injury which is caused by poor weight-lifting techniques. However, this type of injury is next to impossible with sit-ups.
Conclusion:
Even though the majority of people think that certain exercises like sit-ups affect height in one way or another, it’s not true. As you can see, the majority of bodybuilders that probably regularly use this type of exercise have a short-to-average height which means that sit-ups don’t increase nor decrease it.
