Following on from his previous two BLOGs (Developing Balanced Lower and Upper Body Strength Training Programs), intern Ben Mays (http://hullstrength.blogspot.com) now writes an interesting BLOG on core stability and the use of the crunch type exercise.

I’m writing an article today on a topic that is pretty emotive among Strength & Conditioning coaches and physio’s. It has been very widely reported that core exercises that induce spinal flexion (e.g. sit up’s, crunches, russian twists, etc) are ‘BAD’ for the spine leading to problems such as disc bulges/ herniations in the lumbar spine as well as the shortening of rectus abdominus muscles causing postural, glute and breathing dysfunction.

I have to say that until very recently I would have totally agreed with everything I’ve said above and would indeed never have programmed crunch type exercises into my programs. It wasn’t until I started working with Kevin Till that I questioned this. I was quite shocked to see Kevin using crunching type exercises in his programs, but instead of totally railing against this I decided that i’d be better off to go away and perhaps read more of the science and evidnece out there before making a judgement.

So thats exactly what I did, I went away and really tried to read around the area in more detail. Suprisingly, after reading the research there is actually very little hard scientific evidence to suggest that crunching type exercises lead to back pain, or any of the problems mentioned above for that matter. The research that does support these problems is at best highly flawed with the majority of studies being performed on cadavers (A Corpse!!). The problem with this research is that the cadavers performed crunching movements in isolation and were often exposed to totally unrealistic forces (thousands of repitions in a matter of hours). With this in mind it seems that maybe crunches aren’t so bad for you after all? Further to this when you look at anecdotal evidence from around the world of sport people have been performing crunches for decades (if not centuries) with little or no adverse health affects. Indeed Cristiano Ronaldo performs a reported 3,000 sit ups a day!! With little or no injury problems.

In Summary
Although I am playing devils advocate a bit here, I do now think that it is ok to perform some crunching exercises in a srtructured training program. Whilst they shouldn’t take up the majority of your core training (and I wouldn’t recommend 3,000 a day!) I would say that if roughly 1/5th of your core training is based around Spinal Flexion this is going to be acceptable. Combining spinal flexion with other types of core training including anti extension exercises (planks, rollouts, etc), posterior core exercises (back extensions, glute work, etc), rotary core exercises (barbell rotations, med ball throws, etc) and lateral core training (side planks, pallof holds, etc) should give a great balance towards hitting all aspects of the core. Core training should try to comprise of an equal amount of each type of movement.

I certainly think that people need to go out and read the research on the area more as it seems to have been misinterpreted to some extent. However, if you want to read a more detailed version of the whole issue then check out this blog by Bret Contreras on T-Nation, it’s long but goes into some serious detail!
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/to_crunch_or_not_to_crunch

So there you go, another very interesting BLOG from Ben! What our training should and does comprise of is a very interesting debate. KT Conditioning tries to hit all aspects of core strength and crunching type movements are only a small element of the core training we program and deliver. For more information on structuring your training for improved performance you should Contact Us now!

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