Feel nauseous after any (small) amount of abdominal exercise

[BonnyEm]

Anything I try knocks me sick.
I'm fed up.
I tried a very basic beginners pilates a couple of hours ago. I still feel very sick from it. This can't be right?
Can I do anything to stop feeling like this?
I've always been like this for as long as I can remember. Any exercise is fine until I start to do abdominal exercise then 🤢

What exercises are you doing for your abdomen, and what is your goal from doing them?

It will be either the digestion or the motion.

Did you have food prior to the class? how long between food and abs? Try again on an empty stomach, at least two hours without anything but water and even here not too much.

You read crazy things about drinking huge amount of water on MN.

It could also be the movement of the head/eyes. try to fix a point on the wall, such as the clock, a light switch or a defect and let your head move up/dow/side but locking the eyes .

Yesterday it was a couple of hours after eating and drinking. It was an NHS YouTube pilates workout.
I only have to do two sit ups and it starts.
It's always been this way, empty stomach or not. Dh thinks I should speak to GP about it.
It puts me off any abdominal exercise although I could really do with it! Especially building my core strength.

Well, you use your core muscles every day, all day, except when you're lying down, so it's not a problem with them. Either you're overdoing it (so, you could try something less vicious than sit ups, like a press up against a wall/table, which would work your core but not beat holy hell out of it) or it's the motion that's making you sick (so you could try isometric exercises like the plank, so that you work your core without jiggling about)

Start small and build slowly. Think in weeks and months, rather than days, re progression.

If neither of those work, see your doctor.

I don’t like sit-up/crunch type exercises, I don’t see them working for me.
Try doing toe-taps, but they will only do your lower abs.
Lie on the floor with knees bent and toes on the floor. Lift one foot up 90 degrees so your shin is in a straight line with the ceiling, then put it down and swap. Alternate your legs. The movement is from your hip, not your knee, keep the knee still.

I am with you Dh here. Two sit-ups, especially at the speed or pilates, shouldn't trigger such a reaction.
Do you feel nauseous, dizzy? When you say "sick" what do you mean?

We could give you a list of abs that do not involve crunch or sit-ups but I am not comfortable here, because you need to find out why.
Is it only the crushing together the muscles in the typical crunch/sit-up / C-shape movement or also the compressive type (suck all air in as in pull belly in for photo, then keeping the vacuum, breathing in and out? , what about side. Standing up tall, arms towards ceiling and slowly bending the waist keeping arms up? What about hanging from something and lifting your knees towards our chest?

When you go to the GP, don't say " I can't do abs because I feel sick", but say whenever I bend my torso, especially in the abs section of a workout, I feel sick for hours.
Say that if you are in a class in a gym, you have to leave the class, because you are too sick to continue.
Say it is impacting your ability to exercise. Your core works with your skeleton to keep you up straights. One needs a good core.

I would ask for some sort of imaging because you might have a bend in the bowel or something similar totally innocent .

I'm not a physio or anything but I wonder whether you are "gripping" somehow - your stomach muscles are squeezing your insides because they are compensating for a weakness somewhere else? A physio might be able to tell you if it's something to do with how your muscles are working and might be able to give exercises to help.