Pain from using ab wheel - am I about to herniate myself?
I recently added the ab wheel to my workout since regular situps and crunches hurt my lower back. Until then I had been doing static leg elevations (and getting some pretty good times, IMO) so my abs have reasonable endurance and isometric strength, but I wanted abs that would be:
1. capable of exerting sudden strength
So I bought an ab wheel after seeing it reccomended in this subforum. I have been doing sets of 5-10 from the knees since my abs aren't good enough for the pushup-position type of reps. It feels like a great workout and usually 3 sets of 6 reps leaves me aching. The only problem is, after doing this for about a week, my abs have been all bulgy and wierd - like, overnight they appear to have quadrupled their definition, and they have been like this since day 2 or so, which leads me to believe that it is not muscle growth but some sort of wierd ab mangling or something. After doing sets on the ab wheel, the second row of muscles from the bottom sort of juts out and hurts like crazy - to the point where it hurts to do a chin-up because of abdominal pain.
Is there a risk I am seriously injuring myself, or is this just a severe case of muscle soreness? I have been scaling back my workout when it starts to get painful, but I'm still a little concerned.
Does anyone know if ab wheels ever cause health problems?