LA Times Article Confronts Core Training Myth

NO SIT UPS?

I can hear the cheers from across the globe!

But I can also hear the steam coming out of the ears of the millions who do theirs faithfully and swear by them.

So what gives?

Here’s the deal…Sit ups where you curl up with a rounded back put a TON of pressure onto your discs.  That’s the main reason my teacher, Dr. Stu McGill, is so against them.

He’s been sticking electrodes in back muscles for decades at his lab in Waterloo, Ontario and has VOLUMES of literature about the causes of disc injuries.

So if Stu says no sit ups,  I agree!

Well sort of!

Here’s what I mean.  You should always look at an exercise and say, "Does this help train and protect my body during my activities of daily living?  In other words…"IS IT FUNCTIONAL?"

Well, the answer to the sit up question is, "Of course it’s functional!"  If you’re lying down, you should be able to "sit up", right?

So yes, you should be able to do it…BUT to do it 25, 50, 100 times?  That’s way too much disc load and even if you have no pain with them right now, why risk the repetitive injury??

So, what to do instead?

There’s a series of a few exercises on video that go along with the article that we’ve been implementing here at Core Wellness for over 10 years!

As a matter of fact, our thinking here at Core Wellness has evolved even beyond these "man made" exercises to the "neurodevelopmental model" that’s come out of Eastern Europe the last few years.

I mention it in my comment I left of the LA Times blog (copied below) and wrote about it in the first post ever on this blog.

- – - – - – -

COMMENT #290:  Well written article. I’ve worked with dr. mcgill personally several times over the last 10 years and the man’s amazing with his detailed science.

the “belly button to the spine” for most people, tends to create a flared rib cage in the front and a loss of intra abdominal pressure which creates an “energy leak”.

so for human FUNCTION, you must train FUNCTIONALLY!

here is where we must look to infant posture development as the model of how to train the “deep core stability” system. this system is automatically triggered by reproducing the environment encountered by the infant as posture is developed fully at four years old.

this new model has emerged from prague and is the only one that’s ever made PERFECT sense. this is because it’s how we were designed.

there’s a blog post about this and several self test videos at http://gettoyourcore.com/the-origin-of-your-core-revealed

- – - – -

What do YOU think about sit ups and core training?

Any questions, Comments?  Leave a comment here on the blog!