How to Tone Your Stomach – Without the Back Pain!
Do you find your back is hurting or sore after training your abdominal muscles? Even worse, have you found yourself suffering severe, sharp back pain when training your abs? Getting a washboard six-pack can be quite a painful experience if you are not sure which exercises you should be doing to develop your abs.
The first rule of developing a toned, flat stomach is to cross sit-ups off your list of things to do in the gym. Sit-ups involve bending at the waist; spinal flexion and medical research has long uncovered that this is the exact movement that can cause a herniated disc in your lower back. More recently, researchers at Woodend Hospital in Great Britain, used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) on 22 healthy volunteers to identify which positions are best and which are worst for our backs.
Using a Positional MRI machine allowed the patients to move through a range of different positions -slouching (the person hunches forward with feet touching the floor), upright (90 degrees, with feet touching the floor), reclined backwards (135 degrees, with feet touching the floor).
How sit-ups and crunches damage your back
Measurements of spinal angles, spinal disk height and movements were taken (when undue strain is placed on a disk, it moves, often out of place). The upright position, at 90 degrees, came out top of the list as to which movement caused disks to move the most. Can you guess which ab exercise most resembles that movement? Why, the traditional sit-up, of course.
Getting your six-pack looking like a set of house bricks doesn’t need to end in tears if you are using a safe, effective abdominal-specific program. If you are using sit-ups or have a poor technique with your crunches, your hip flexor is forced to use excessive psoas activation, which causes the psoas to pull on the lower spine, arching the back and creating compressive forces on the discs of the lumbar spine.
When the back arches it can cause the vertebrae around the psoas attachment to grind together, which can potentially lead to disc degeneration. The damage caused is similar to the results uncovered by the Great Britain researchers. It is the movement caused by the pulling on the spine which brings the disk out of place.
Not sure about your technique?
Do not be discouraged if you are not sure about your technique or can’t find the abdominal routines that are effective for developing ripped, hard abs. Every dilemma has its solution and you can find the key to an effective abs development program. Check out my LoveSexyAbs review and unlock the secrets to effective, safe abs workouts and video tuition that deliver the kind of results everybody wants.
