Stuart Mcgill Views
Today we go over the Stir the Pot advanced ab exercise that was discussed today in the blog in the NY Times health and fitness section. Author Gretchen Reynolds, interviews professor Stuart McGill, a renowned back pain researcher from Canada, who takes on Pilates, personal trainers and the copycat bodybuilding culture of ab exercises that have grown out of misunderstandings of the back pain literature over the years. He takes issue with the oversimplification of the so-called Queensland group of researchers that noted changes in one particular muscle in the abs, the transversus abdominis, in back pain sufferers. Many of you have been exposed to this material in the common cues to a“press your low back into the floore” as you start to work the abs.
Excellent question Mary! Indeed, the slant of this post, and the article in the NY Times is addressing questionable ways of training the abs. The abs are only one quadrant of the core and functionally we should address ALL core areas to insure healthy spine habits. Pilates addresses all areas of the core. Our only concern is the outdated instruction on some of the ab exercises. Specifically, the cue to press the lumbar spine into the floor while performing a abdominal curl has been demonstrated in the literature to impose compressive loads on the lumbar discs that exceed what NIOSH has determined safe for the work environment. While those exercises might be great for the abs, they are detrimental to the discs. Our goal is to train the abs while minimizing disc compression, hence the exercises we talk about here. To get Stuart McGill ’s take, check out his video I posted on June 25 her "stuart mcgill
Yikes Ward! OKt…to start with, the exercise demonstrated would be a wonderful exercise for developing many of the core muscle groups, including the abs, hip flexors, lumbar extensors, glutes and even the quads. But, and a very large BUT, the full endrange lumbar flexion and extension as described would likely place VERY high compressive loads on the disc and shear loads on the spine. In the NY Times interview and video that Stuart McGill gave that we posted here, he said it wonderfully. To paraphrasee… “You have a finite number of flexion cycles on your spine in a lifetime. If you want to use those up doing crunches (or this type of flexed spine exercise), thatm’s your business.s”
To get you started on the workout program you desire, I HIGHLY recommend Stuart McGill ’s new (3rd) edition of Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance. You can hear an interview with Dr. McGill at Joe Heiler, PT, CSCS at Joes’s website which is chocked full of great training info. The interview is an audio file and lasts about 40 minutes so plan some time to take it all in.
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