Do you do abdominal exercises? If so, do you do crunches and pull in your abdominals? If so, perhaps this is not a good idea.
If you use a DVD or go to a class to do exercise that involves abdominals, usually you are told repeatedly the same thing. “Pull in your tummy. Try to flatten or hollow out your abs. Try to flatten your back against the floor. “
The idea behind keeping the abs flat and the back against the floor is to work the deep abdominals. The idea is to work the transversus abdominis, since many years ago some research suggested that this muscle did not work properly in those who had back pain. Therefore, it was suggested that if these muscles were strengthened then back pain would be lessened or cured.
Now some researchers are suggesting that the original research may be flawed, or at least not universally applicable for all back pain.
Further, now many think that perhaps it is not just the deep abdominals that need working. They are suggesting that you need to work all the muscles round the core including the surface (superficial) muscles.
Others suggest that the flat tummy, lower back on the floor is actually bad for your spine. That this goes against the natural curve of the lower back and the muscles that hold the curves of the back.
Further some researchers suggest that sit-ups (crunches) are bad for your spine and that other exercises should be done to strengthen the core. So whether you should have a flattened tummy, or not, is irrelevant. The theory behind crunches being bad for you is that the spine flexes back for each crunch and this squeezes your spine in a way that is bad for it, if it is done repeatedly.
The NYT* has an article about the different points of view. There is also a short video in which 4 exercises that work the core are demonstrated. These 4 exercises do not involve sit-ups and were developed to work all the core muscle groups. I think the video is very interesting so check it out.
I am going to try the new exercises – tomorrow.
*You need to register to look at much of the content on the NYT website, however there are no strings attached to registering.
[tags]abdominal exercises, sit-ups, crunches, flattened tummy, core, spine[/tags]
