A lot of fitness and medical experts think doing a ton of sit-ups and crunches is a really bad idea. The movement puts a repetitive strain at the point of your back that is most susceptible to injury.
“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.
So doing all those crunches for six pack abs may not be the best thing for your health. You might want to do more exercises that attack the entire core and are more natural to the way we move. Or like me, you might just read this and feel the guilt for never doing sit-ups lift wonderfully into the air. Of course, in the spirit of full disclosure, this post is being provided by someone who has a lot more of a keg than a six pack.
