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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What if gravity was actually a good thing for your posture and you could manipulate it to maintain a youthful appearance, good health and reduce the aches and pains commonly associated with aging?

I recently attended the Iowa state convention for physical educators and was fortunate to attend many great presentations from top-notch professionals, some of whom I have seen previously and others I saw for the first time, in person.

Among these presentations was something unexpected, a re-introduction with inversion training.  When I was supposed to attend a workshop on Indian clubs and the subtle side of fitness, I was surprised when they started setting up two inversion tables.

My brother and I had received inversion boots for Christmas when I was 18.  This was the early 80’s and we set up a bar in the basement to hang from, next to our Sears weight set.  We would hang upside down for a little while and do inverted situps, making sure that you left enough energy to swing back up and dismount.

The boots came with a book by Robert Martin, M.D., which I kept all these years.  So I found it interesting when  Ed Thomas talked about going out to California and spending some time with Dr. Martin.  We each got to spend some time on the inversion table while someone else guided us through various stages of inversion and did some light stretches with our neck, which felt pretty good, I might add.

Having done those same stretches many times with massage therapy clients, I was intrigued with the possibilities that this might hold.  It caused me to dust off the book and do some reading.  Dr. Martin talks about the different postures that man can achieve, unlike most animals and how we have the opportunity to decompress and lengthen the spine by taking up different positions.

He is of the belief that this is a plus, when many consider gravity to be a negative thing, causing sagging and drooping with age.  He believes that by changing the position of our body relative to the constant force of gravity, we can use the force of gravity as a stress equalizer.

Dr. Martin describes six basic human postures:  standing/sitting, lying down, flexion (forward bending), extension (backwards bending), hanging from your hands or legs (brachiation), and inversion (upside down).

It’s interesting that the inversion model that he mentions has someone in a handstand position with the feet against the wall.  I find this interesting because Dr. Martin was a gymnast and gymnastics instructor, who seemed to find that this would sometimes have better results than his medical efforts.

This also becomes more interesting, as one of the presenters that weekend was Jon Hinds, founder of Monkey Bar Gym.  I have seen video of Jon walking down stairs on his hands and this session provided a logical progression for doing a handstand.

Jon’s regular practice of doing handstands and swinging from suspended poles and chains – like kids do on a playground (monkeybars) – would be a very healthful one according to the book, not to mention a creative and fun way to get a workout.

Low back pain is all too common in our society and spending too much time seated is often listed as a contributing factor.  If the force of gravity is constantly pulling us straight down, sitting with your head and shoulders forward for long periods of time probably isn’t a good thing.  One of Dr. Martin’s suggestions might be to frequently change your position to decompress your spine and seek to balance out your body.

One way to address this would be working on extension (backward bending).  Something simple I recently started doing is to reach up overhead while arching my thoracic spine, breathing deeply with my stomach and carefully extending my neck up and back, stretching many different structures from the waist up, all at once.  Combined with some more precise work with the Indian clubs and I have noticed a BIG difference in the last three weeks.

Having injured a shoulder almost twenty years ago, mostly due to lifting weights with poor posture, I have come to realize the importance of having a balanced, symmetrical body.  Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way but I’ve managed to avoid the surgeon’s knife so far, after the recommendation to have surgery or quit lifting weights.

I recently moved my fitness business into a physical therapy clinic and am sharing their exercise room.  I get some interested looks from some of the patients while they are walking on the treadmill.  One guy in particular asked me why my business is called Gravity.  I told him that I used a lot of bodyweight exercises that use the force of gravity for resistance.

I also try to place my clients in standing positions as often as possible and seek to enhance their posture and try to align them with gravity, so that they move more efficiently.  This man is rehabbing a knee injury, has a protruding belly and his neck is probably two inches out in front of his torso, which is a less than optimal position.

Without knowing much else about his health history, it would obviously be important for this relatively young man to not go through the rest of his life, so misaligned with the forces of gravity.

Dr. Martin recommends hanging from your arms as a natural form of traction (assuming you have no contraindications).  He states, “if you are suffering from extreme tension in the back, hang by your arms!” Again, not everyone will be capable of this.

With an inversion table, you don’t have to go to full inversion to gain some benefits and you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the fully inverted position.  You can take your time in getting your body used to decompression and even slight inversion might be beneficial.

Bottom line, make sure to change your positions of posture frequently, however you choose to do so and not spend too much time in any one position.  Here is an article on  Decompression and Mobilization with Inversion.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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….that is the question.  Are spinal flexion movements like crunches and situps damaging to the spine, or nothing to worry about?

If you’re familiar with top spine researcher Dr. Stuart McGill, you should know that his research shows that repeated flexion, such as doing 15 minutes of crunch and situp variations, can be damaging to the discs.

I attended one of his seminars on core stability a while back at Palmer Chiropractic College.  Having read some of his articles, I was fairly familiar with his concepts for core training.

Recently, I listened to a podcast with Dr. McGill and he stated his belief that we have a limited number of forward flexion (bending) cycles in each one of us and that doing lots of these type of ab exercises just wastes that number.

He thinks that those who have tempted fate in this manner, may have genetics that allow them to get away with it, up to a point.  He advocates “bracing” the abs isometrically to support the spine and strengthen the abdominal wall……

a wall with different layers of muscles running in different directions, kind of like plywood, where the different layers are stronger together than any of them on their own.

Plank exercises are the starting point for these different “bracing” strategies of core stability.  These can be done in the front and side positions, and bridges can address the glute and back muscles.

McGill recently has done studies with competitive strongmen, like the ones you see on ESPN, lifting massive amounts of weight.

This confirmed the role of the quadratus lumborum as an important spine stabilizer.  These muscles run from the bottom of your ribcage to the pelvis and also attach to the spine.

When you carry a heavy suitcase in one hand, it places a lot of demand on this muscle to keep your back straight – or when you carry a heavy suitcase in both hands, these muscles are working hard to support your spine.

So training your abs and low back to stay tight when lifting heavy objects is one of the benefits to this method of training.  Improved posture is another.

If you are someone who has had disc problems or sciatica, then situps and crunches are the last thing you want to do, as this puts unnecessary stress on your back.

One of the few exceptions to doing flexion might be those with too much curve in their low back.  A few sets of reverse crunches might help keep everything in a more neutral position.

After basic stability is gained, I like to use sandbag exercises and suspension training for increased intensity to your midsection – teaching your upper and lower body to work with your “core” for increased coordination – the way it works in real life situations.

Get Moving!

Brian Morgan

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