Why you should not be doing crunches (and all your other "core" exercises)

Are you still doing crunches/bicycles/and back extensions for core work? 

In my first post I tried to make it clear that I began this blog because I truly believe in change for progress. Most professionals in any industry are afraid of doing things wrong or afraid to do things differently in the case that people find out they were not doing it right, in the first place. I am forever looking for ways to make myself a better coach/more knowledgeable trainer/more humane person/ and more highly effective business man...and sometimes it turns out that I was doing something that I, maybe, shouldn't have. Change can come in many forms; it can mean that I need to give more nutritional advice to my clients, rearrange some of my 1 on 1 sessions to group, or absolutely stop advocating these crazy crunch and sit up progressions all together because it is causing lower back injuries. In my world, I try to find one or all of those changes every week and when I do, I usually want to puke for not making those changes earlier. I will not apologize for continually striving to do things right, but I will apologize to all of my clients who have done thousands of reps of 101 different types of ab crunches in my sessions throughout the years...especially if you are having lower back pain. Good news, you will never see them again!

As most of you know, the ab work was never a major part of our sessions, unless you begged me and you were too fatigued to work any major muscle groups. I was always a proponent of getting abs through the reduction of body fat and rarely, if ever, did crunches in my own training (because I was more focused on spending time in more functional lifts, like squats).I would, actually, love to hear from any of you who have found that the millions of crunches that you have been doing has given you great abs! I just don't think it happens, which made me wonder.  But it wasn't until I began to delve deep into the modern research of back dysfunction and core musculature that I really began to understand why these exercises can be more dangerous than prosperous in our programs.  

Two of the major researchers that head up the anti-crunch bandwagon is the world famous physical therapist Shirly Sahrmann and spinal expert Dr. Stuart Mcgill. Their research in core training and back pain has been instrumental in the world of movement and performance training for the past decade.  They explain it like this: for years and years we have only assumed that the primary function of the rectus abdominus/external obliques/and other ab musculature was to flex the spine like you do in a sit up/crunch/or any other exercise that rounds your lower back. They were basing this assumption on cadaver studies and had never really known (until modern technology allowed) what the primary function was, for these muscles, in a live movement of a human. 

In the past several years, Dr. Mcgill and Sahrmann's studies have found that these muscles have, in actuality, a more critical function. Their main job is to stabilize the spine and to keep our torso upright in movement and exercise. In fact, Mcgill states in his testing that "repeat bouts of spinal flexion causes severe damage to vertebral disks." In a world where the majority of you are sitting at your computers and slumping your shoulders forward right now, why should we reinforce that in our fitness programs. Sit up in your chairs and keep your spine erect! We need to strengthen the core muscles so that we stay upright and straight in our spines to avoid excess loads in our lumbar areas. How do we do this? 

We now know that we don't do it by flexing in a crunch, but what is the most effective way to strengthen our core? We have to get away from strength and focus on stabilization. That means that we have to work exercises that keep our spine straight while our appendages move through normal ranges of motion. This is a very difficult skill and can only be effectively achieved by effectively strengthening the stabilized posture. We have to take posture seriously in our major exercises (squat/bench/pullups), work towards strength symmetry (front/back/side to side), and add in core stability exercises such as: Planks, Side Planks, Physio Ball Rollouts, and the Physio Ball Pikes. 

...just wait till I tell you that running is bad for you and fats are good.