Gravity Fx Fitness

There’s been a lot of discussion lately on whether or not you should be doing crunches or situps if you want a healthy spine.  Spine researcher Stuart McGill has been at the forefront of much of this debate and if you haven’t heard, he doesn’t believe that most people need to include these exercises, especially if you have a past history of low back pain.

I don’t have my clients do them for two reasons :

first, most people over 40 already have some slight posture issues going on and don’t need to spend any more time in a flexed position and second, they are just too inefficient – they take too much time for what you get.

I recently attended the Midwest Performance Enhancement seminar and the strength coaches and physical therapists who were the speakers, were all against doing repeated spinal flexion in an exercise or rehab program.  Abdominal “bracing” is their preference (like bracing for a punch to the stomach).

The article 3 Surprisingly Strong Ab Exercises talks about doing an estimated 250,000 crunches to burn a pound of bodyfat, bringing up the point that its a waste of time to try and trim your waistline this way.  Last week I had a man who looked to be in his mid to late 40’s stop in while I was training some clients.

I didn’t have time to talk to him for very long but gave him a brochure and he gave me a business card.  I called him to see what he was looking for in an exercise program and he stated that he had been doing 1000 situps a day and not gotten rid of his belly. I told him that this was not the best way to solve this problem and that he might have been putting his back at risk of injury.

He didn’t seem to get my point but this man DID NOT have a flat stomach despite his routine.  In fact, he looked like he hadn’t been doing any work for his belly at all.

Strength coach Mike Robertson addressed this issue recently in his article Should You Crunch? part 2.  One of the points that he brings up is the effect on the upper body and shoulder function.  While standing, lean your upper body forward in the position that you end up in while doing crunches.  Now, raise your arm overhead and see how far it goes.  Then, stand completely upright and see how much higher you can reach.

A long-time massage client of mine passed away two months ago at the age of 79.  She routinely did about 700 situps daily when I first met her in a chiropractic clinic.  She had painful neck spasms then and dealt with chronic neck issues thereafter.  I tried to get her to break this habit but the last 3-4 years she also had a lot of shoulder issues which I believe was related to all that spinal flexion exercise.

If you would like to listen to an interview with Dr. Stuart McGill click on this link McGill Takes on Crunches…Again and here is a review of a one day seminar with McGill that I attended at Palmer Chiropractic College about four years ago Are Situps Causing Your Back Pain?

Also, if you have had some back or posture issues one of the first places to start is with diaphragmatic breathing.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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Not long ago, I attended a seminar with a top spine researcher. This doctor of spine biomechanics, Dr. Stuart McGill, has a lab where he does research on what causes low back pain.

He has people coming from all over the world to see if he can help them with their pain. Often, these people have been to several doctors prior to this, with few results.

In this lecture on spine stability, he brought up some interesting facts on exercise and back pain.

Have you been told that you should do your situps with your knees bent to take pressure off your back? Doesn’t make much difference. In fact, most people shouldn’t be doing situps at all!

Seems that several soldiers are coming back from Iraq with back problems. What is one of their physical training tests? Timed situps – how many can you do in a minute or two.

What is the problem? Simple, this is not what your abs (stomach) were meant to do. It creates an imbalance between the muscles on the front and back of the body.

Your abs are meant to help stabilize your spine and you need to train them to do that. Herniated discs can be a result of this repeated flexion (bending). So obviously, if you have had problems with your low back, you would want to avoid doing situps and crunches.

Another point was having adequate mobility. Some times your back hurts because certain areas such as your hips and pelvis lack proper flexibility.  Your hips need to be both flexible and strong at the same time.  A lack of flexibility in the hips can cause your lumbar spine to rotate too much.

And oh yes, posture! Poor posture places unnecessary stress on the joints, as your muscles are fighting against gravity, working harder than they need to. Good posture places you in a more mechanically efficient position.

While he didn’t go into too much detail on flexibility and mobility, you should already know my philosophy – we each need a proper blend of mobility and stability – the ability to be flexible and strong at the same time. The researcher believes that your lumbar spine (low back) isn’t meant to be flexible, but stable.

One other interesting note, he said that back strength doesn’t necessarily prevent you from having back issues. The endurance of the muscles surrounding and stabilizing the spine is more important.

A good exercise to strengthen your abdominal wall is the front plank.  “Brace” your abs as you hold this position for 10-30 seconds without letting your stomach sag towards the floor.  You can do the modified version from your knees to make this exercise easier.

Get moving!

Brian

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