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

Tweet This Post

You can have great abs without doing hundreds and hundreds of crunches!  I’m not big on marathon sessions of crunches and situps - partly, because it just takes too much time and I’m too busy to do something inefficient.

They take so much time because there isn’t much tension on your stomach and tension is key to training  your muscles, including your midsection.

So how do you get six pack abs without doing crunches?  Simple, you first burn off the fat covering your stomach with multi-joint exercises that use the large muscles in your body and get rid of the “junk” in your diet, otherwise noone can see your flat stomach, anyway!

When doing specific ab exercises, train them with tension – increase the intensity, not the amount of time you train them.  Start off with exercises like planks and bridges to strengthen your stomach and low back.

Then progress to exercises like “rollouts” on an ab wheel or do various pushups and pikes on a suspension trainer like the Bandit’s Loops or TRX.  This trains your stomach and low back to provide stability and coordination while your upper or lower body is moving.

Besides adding to your total body coordination and athletic ability, this also is more time-efficient than spending 15-30 minutes on the floor doing a separate ab workout and I’m all about doing efficient workouts.

I also like using sandbags and kettlebells to hit this area with some intensity.  Sandbags in particular are great for hitting your obliques – adding in a measure of back prevention while giving you a more athletic body.

Many of the “gimmicks” you see on TV use professional fitness models to promote their product.  Most of the time, they have never used that product before and got in great shape with other methods – then they might have even had some liposuction done just before shooting the commercial, to look even better.

Besides getting a flatter stomach, you will probably have better posture and possibly prevent back injury at the same time.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

Tweet This Post