Everyone knows that the road to flat, tight abs is paved with crunches. Lots and lots and lots of excruciating crunches. Or is it?

As it turns out, the exercises synonymous with strong, attractive abs may not be the best way to train your core—and may be doing damage to your back.

“We stopped teaching people to do crunches a long, long time ago,” says Dr. Richard Guyer, president of the Texas Back Institute.  That’s because the “full flex” movement—the actual “crunch” part of crunches – puts an unhealthy strain on your back at its weakest point. The section with the most nerves (and most potential for nerve damage) is in the back of the spine, which is the very part that bends and strains during a sit-up.

“There are only so many bends or a ‘fatigue life’,” in your spinal disks,” says Stuart M. McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. Inside each disk is a mucus-like nucleus, he says, and “if you keep flexing your spine and bending the disk over and over again, that nucleus slowly breaches the layers and causes a disk bulge, or a disk herniation.”  A herniated disk won’t show through your swimsuit, but it’s no fun, and can cause persistent back and leg pain, weakness, and tingling.

Think of the oft-repeated advice for movers: bend at the hips and lift with your legs, not your back. And what is a sit-up but a back bend done in a lying position? “When people are doing curl up over gym balls and sit-ups, and this kind of thing, they are replicating a very potent injury mechanism on their back,” says McGill. “Every time they bend it they are one repetition closer to damaging the disk.”

And of course, when people do crunches, they rarely stop at one or two: in the quest for flat abs, they’ll churn out dozens at a time, bringing them ever closer to  “flex intolerance”—so much pain and stiffness that it’s difficult to tie one’s shoes or bend down to pick a penny off the ground.

But who cares about back health as bathing suit season approaches? Turns out, crunches might not be the best solution for a flat stomach, either. That’s because doing too many sit-ups at the expense of other, more comprehensive movements can lead to the dreaded “aerobic abs.”  That’s the term celebrity trainer Steve Maresca coined to describe the distended stomachs of those who focus only on the rectus abdominus muscles targeted by sit-ups and crunches. “They look great from the front, but when they turn to the side, their stomachs are extended,” he says. To get the long, lean look, one needs to work transverse abdominius, a large muscle that holds in those rectus abs, and is mainly unchallenged by traditional ab work (aka, the sit-up and crunches).

Doing a sit-up doesn’t train your ab muscles to do the job for which they were designed – keeping your spine straight and secure and providing power for your movements. In everyday life, “the abdominals are braces,” says McGill, author of “Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance” (Stuart McGill, 2004). When doing any athletic movement—even opening a door—“the spine is in a neutral posture, not flexed, and the abdominal muscles are contracted to brace the spine.”

The best way—for both your back and your beach body—to work your midsection is to do movements that challenge the muscles to perform the way they’re designed and expected to work in real life, and not to train muscles in isolation. “It’s important to have strong abs, but strong abdominals are not the only thing,” says Dr. Guyer. “You have your back extenders, your flexors, which are belly muscles, you have your oblique muscles.” Working all of these muscle groups—the anatomical association known as “the core”—is essential to both back health and general athleticism.

As a result, only training for good-looking abs won’t add to your athleticism or overall strength. On the other hand, moves not traditionally designed for good-looking abs can in fact help strengthen and tone those muscles.

Consider the pushup. Not usually thought of as a great ab move, the pushup forces you to work several muscles at once: it forces your core muscles to stabilize your trunk as your arms and back work to move the body up and down. “Do you see how a pushup is a full body challenge?” says McGill. “It challenges abdominals, front of your legs, your arms and your back. That is how you use those muscles in real life.”

Like the pushup, the best exercises for back health and a firmer stomach are ones that work your abs while holding your spine straight, like planks or leg drops (done when you lie flat on your back, with your hands at the base of your spine for added support. Raise your legs up at a 90 degree angle, then slowly lower until they’re only inches from the ground. Repeat until your stomach burns and you want to throw up). And because your core is the center of power for most other exercises, a long workout full of dynamic movements targeting legs, arms and back also translates to a good core workout. (For more examples of effective ab exercises, visit McGill’s site, backfitpro.com.)

Of course, it won’t matter how muscular your torso is if your body fat is too high. The best way to build strong, visible abs isn’t through repeated sit-ups, but by engaging in circuit training that has you working your entire core while you’re burning calories – and to keep yourself disciplined during meals. “If you want to burn your fat mass, make sure you have a combination of weight training and cardiovascular, but 90 percent of good abs is your nutrition,” says Maresca. However, he does offer a quick tip for those of us with a weakness for caloric food: standing up straight and pulling back your shoulders will instantly tighten your transverse abdominal muscle, making you look a little leaner. It’s not quite as impressive as showcasing a well-developed core via 10 percent body fat, but it does leave a lot more time and flexibility for hitting up happy hour.
by Kate Dailey, via Newsweek

Originally published in To Your Health

Tracking down a ball on the baseline, lunging at a passing shot, straining to reach a lob ­ almost every aspect of tennis involves a certain amount of risk. Even the repetitive motions of serving and hitting groundstrokes can cause painful injury, turning you from active participant to unhappy spectator.

According to an article in the Journal of Sports Chiropractic & Rehabilitation, stretching and strengthening exercises can help minimize your risk of sustaining a tennis-related injury.

The authors present various techniques in a photographic format with text explanations. Included is a review of easy exercises you can perform at home or in the gym, such as:

• torso stretch
• pelvic tilt
• hamstring stretch
• lumbar extension
• side bend
• shoulder rotation
• knee flexion
• hip extension
• scapular retraction

You’re probably familiar with some of these techniques already, but your doctor can give you more specific information and outline an exercise program to maximize health and reduce your risk of injury.

Reference:

Baron SH, Washington KW. Tennis injuries: lower the risk through stretching and strengthening. Journal of Sports Chiropractic & Rehabilitation 1999: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp164-70.

Originally published in To Your Health

Many energy drinks claim to increase energy and vitality. In making this claim, the manufacturers often load their concoctions with a variety of substances, including but certainly not limited to caffeine, herbs and various amino acids. That brings us to an interesting question: Do these drinks actually have health benefits, or are there hidden health dangers? Here’s the lowdown on energy drinks.

Energy drinks constitute big business these days. While Austrian-based Red Bull claims to own the lion’s share of the market, all signs point to that dominance changing in the near future. Monster, Adrenaline Rush, Venom and 5-Hour Energy are just a few of the estimated thousands of energy drink distributors worldwide, and they’re everywhere: in stores, schools, gyms and all manner of social environments.

Suffice it to say the popularity of these drinks is unquestionable; their health benefits is another story altogether. The big concern with the majority of energy drinks is their caffeine content: up to 80 mg of caffeine. According to Brown University, that’s more than twice the caffeine in a can of Mountain Dew and more than three times the caffeine in a can of Coca Cola Classic. Why is this important? Because too much caffeine can elevate the heart rate, increase blood pressure, and lead to insomnia (Some energy drink manufacturers have now come out with decaffeinated versions, although that hasn’t seemed to particularly impact the popularity of the caffeinated varieties.)

A recent study that investigated potential safety issues in energy drinks reveal that most energy drinks also contain some combination of natural products such as guarana, taurine and ginseng. Oh, and let’s not forget about sugar, one of the major ingredients in addition to caffeine. Average sugar content can exceed 35 grams per can, according to the study, published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. (Sugar-free versions of some energy drinks are now available, but remember, there are plenty of sugar-free sodas out there, and none of them are any good for you, either.)

Here’s perhaps the most telling point emphasized in the study: “The amounts of guarana, taurine, and ginseng found in popular energy drinks are far below the amounts expected to deliver either therapeutic benefits or adverse events. However, caffeine and sugar are present in amounts known to cause a variety of adverse health effects.”

Here are other things to keep in mind if you or someone you know consumes energy drinks, again courtesy of Brown University:

• Energy drinks should not be consumed while exercising; they tend to promote dehydration, which can be dangerous when combined with fluid loss from sweating.
• Energy drinks should not be combined with alcohol (they often are); the former is a stimulant and the latter is a depressant, which can be a bad combination.Users may not be aware of how impaired they are because the stimulant effects mask the effects of the alcohol. And again, both tend to promote dehydration.

The bottom line: Energy drinks probably aren’t doing you much good, and they could actually end up doing you some harm. Talk to your doctor for more information.