The holy grail of the mainstream health and fitness industry is the ‘6 pack’.
Every man and his dog wants a 6 pack.
Take a step into a commercial gym anywhere in the world and have a good look around.
It is pretty typical to see people performing crunches in every corner of the gym.
People doing that weird ‘hold a heavy plate and bend over sideways until it touches the ground’ exercise.
And lets not forget the ‘kneeling cable crunch’.
Now while I cannot knock any one individuals effort to better themselves through exercise, I can certainly get a little (or very) irritated with the (mis)information that mainstream health and fitness provides to the general public in regards to training the muscles of the trunk and building a strong ‘6 pack’ core.
While these exercises are anatomically correct, in that some of the muscles of the trunk do actually produce those movements. They may not be the most safe or effective way to train the core musculature.
In fact, it has been shown that repeated flexion and extension of the lumbar spine (like that seen in crunches and their variations) can actually increase risk of degradation of the lumbar spine, and associated disc herniation, and/or non-specific low back pain.
Which is bad…
Additionally, while the abdominals and obliques do actually produce those movements, it isn’t how they work in ‘real life’.
So what can you do about it?
Train Smart and train correctly!
To find out how, click HERE!
Post originally published at Hunter Bennett Performance
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