Abdominal Exercises NOT to Do
On Wednesday morning I’m flying to Mexico to attend the wedding of my ol’ buddy Dion from college. It’s going to be a once in a lifetime trip.
And while I’m there, of course, I expect to be asked my fair share of fat loss and ab workout questions (particularly after I take my shirt off at the pool – just KIDDING, I’m not that vain).
Unfortunately, most of my friend’s workout questions will start off wrong, because they’ll be asking: “How much cardio do you do?” and “What’s the best type of crunches for your abs?”
I’ll explain more problems with cardio tomorrow, but today, I want to show you how to INSTANTLY improve your ab workouts by 40%.
To do that, we go to one of the world’s leading experts on back pain.
His name is Dr. Stuart McGill, and back in 2004 I drove my ol’ 1997 Nissan Maxima from Toronto to Waterloo to buy Dr. McGill a hamburger and ask him about the best ab training methods.
Dr. McGill showed me a few unique exercises, told me a cool story about how he was helping an NBA player rehab his back, and then he told me not to do situps or any other exercise where your spine is flexed forward.
Now you’ve probably had a sneaky suspicion that all those crunches were a bad idea, and here’s proof that you were RIGHT!
In fact, on one website, Dr. McGill is quoted as saying:
“…when the spine is fully flexed, we’ve measured the spine losing up to 40% of its ability to bear compressive loads. In other words the spine is strongest when in a neutral position.”
There you go – REMOVE crunches and situps and your ab workouts will instantly be 40% better for you.
What Dr. McGill is saying is that we want to AVOID crunch and situp type exercises, and focus on total-body ab exercises where we brace our abs in a neutral position – rather than flexing (and breaking) our backs.
Dr. McGill continued by saying, “Too many bad backs are created by misinformed people thinking they need to train the rectus with repeated full flexion exercises. There are much better and safer ways to do this.”
Exactly.
That’s why I don’t use crunches or situps in the TT for Abs workouts, and that’s why I drive – and even fly – hours out of my way to meet with experts like Dr. McGill who help me help YOU get the right workouts.
So what we need to do is combine safe, total-body ab exercises with total-body workouts AND proven belly-fat burning interval training to give you the ULTIMATE ab workout system…like the one I’ve been using for years in my TT for Abs programs.
In fact, I have a complete abdominal exercise substitution list here that will help you fix your current ab workouts.
To your success,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Creator, Turbulence Training