Counting sit-ups at a good pace — “as many as you can get in two minutes” — has for many years been an icon of the ritual of suffering to stay physically fit. Bend your back, squeeze your abdomen, raise your back. And repeat until the body endures. The more the better. They were the Way of the Cross for glory, and glory should one day come in the form of six well-marked tablets on the abdomen, also known as six pack. But not everyone got it no matter how much she suffered. As part of the liturgy, along the way the most consecrated would measure the strength of their respective obliques by humiliatingly tapping each other in the critical zone.
Any curious observer without being too regular at the gym will have noticed that the classic abdominals have lost prestige and have gradually disappeared from training routines —not the obsession with him six pack, which is more alive than ever before—but now it is achieved with other strategies, including diet and nutrition.
The fall from grace of sit ups —denomination of the classic abdominals that the fitness American, which in these matters is responsible for creating and destroying global trends— began to be noticed in the gyms of the United States in the mid-2000s. According to the calculation of several consulted coaches, it would arrive in Spain from 2010.
“I remember that back then there were classes of 1,000 sit-ups, you don’t see that anymore. In the long term, so many repetitions took their toll on the cervical and lower back”
Andres Garcia Mazo, coach
His prestige had been born in the 1940s, when the United States Army devoted itself to the training of its cadets. As part of their training, they had to complete as many sit-ups as possible in two minutes. This liturgy was not only considered a safe way to build physical strength, but also a reliable way to measure that strength and other more subjective attributes such as character or the capacity for dedication and sacrifice. To understand how sit ups also invaded the Physical Education classes of the schools and then the gymnasiums, it is only necessary to verify how the tendencies of fitness they look for inspiration again and again in military training.
“With the crunch classics the abdominal muscle was released as if it were the biceps: maximum contractions to achieve muscle hypertrophy and greater volume, but now it is known that if the muscles are different they do not have to be trained in the same way”, reflects Diego Jerez, personal trainer Independent. “Now we know that the function of the rectus abdominis is not to generate movement, but to stabilize the spine and transmit forces well,” he adds.
1,000 abdominal classes
If anyone is to blame for the fall in prestige of the classic crunch, it would have to start with human anatomy scholars and biomechanics experts, who around the 1980s began to question the idea that muscles could be trained. separately, and began to show that those in the abdominal area were connected to each other. It took a decade of research to confirm that the abs were just the most visible muscles in a network that works together, including the diaphragm, obliques, and pelvic floor muscles. The truth is that the change of concept also affected the jargon of the fitness, who entered the 21st century talking about training the core to refer to the work of all the muscles of the central part of the body.
Andrés García Mazo set foot in a gym for the first time at the age of 15. “I remember that back then there were classes of 1,000 sit-ups, you don’t see that anymore. In the long term, so many repetitions took their toll on the cervical and lower back because they were the ones that pulled the most”.
Personal trainer John López also remembers those times. “Training is always about managing fatigue. When they made 200 or 300 sit ups, the quadratus lumborum was injured by the volume of the repetitions”.
“Perhaps if you work with a personal trainer, these exercises will be maintained because they are effective, but in these cases the coach is on top, controlling the technique,” says Andrés, who works as a coach of collective activities at the Metropolitan club in Madrid.
Both professionals have experienced how the classic abdominals have been adapted or directly replaced by isometric plates and other exercises that seek the stability of these muscles. “These are exercises that are easier to understand and more effective, there are no repetitions and injuries are minimized,” says Andrés García. “Now we train in a more functional way, looking for the stability of all the muscles,” says John López. When Adrián Medina, the youngest of all, and also a group activities coach for the Metropolitan club, started working, those obsessed with 1,000 sit-ups had moved on to the bodybuilding universe a long time ago. “We have to evolve, now we also know that to achieve the famous six pack You have to follow very strict rules of nutrition and diet, they are not achieved with contractions of the abdomen, ”he says.
The back mechanic
The definitive death of the classic abdominals is attributed to Stuart McGuill, Canadian researcher expert in Biomechanics and professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In 2015 he published the book Back Mechanic (“the back mechanic”), where he gathered his conclusions from 30 years of research. It is considered the most complete manual to prevent and cure back pain. After interviewing hundreds of people, he came to a compelling conclusion and recounted it in one of the chapters: Most people with chronic lower back and lumbar injuries had overused fast reps of sit-ups.
McGill explains in his book that when a person’s spine curves and tightens to move a weight, that movement puts stress on their spinal discs. It is the reason why workers who carry heavy loads often reach middle age with back pain. The only way to avoid it, says the professor, is to contract all the muscles in the center of the body – the famous core—to protect the spine and transfer the effort to larger muscles, such as those of the legs. Just what weightlifters do, and can’t always be applied by warehouse stockers.
“The core it is the center of the body, it is not only the abdomen, but also the gluteus and the long muscles of the back fall into this concept. It is a muscle group that must be contracted to give stability and protection to the spine. Our job now is to train it to contract automatically on a daily basis,” explains Diego Jerez, who also teaches Pilates. In his classes, he asks the students to maintain the natural curvature of the lower back to take care of the health of the back.
McGill demonstrated how sit-ups violated all of these principles. Lifting the full weight of your upper body from a prone position doesn’t allow you to strengthen your core or transfer that effort to your legs. And exercise is by its nature repetitive. “For generations, schoolchildren and troops alike were told to do as many sit-ups as possible in order to score well on mandatory tests. Some people can do these exercises with no problem, but that ability depends largely on genetic factors, for example, how light or heavy the person is, not on any particular execution skill. For military training and general population testing, sit-ups just don’t work,” he wrote in his book.
After the book’s publication, McGill began receiving hundreds of testimonials from people with injuries that matched the pattern he described. Most were trainers and physical therapists in the United States and Canadian Armed Forces, who were the first to question the primacy of sit ups in their physical training. In the last decade, classic sit-ups have begun to be replaced by isometric and static exercises such as planks, and repetitive sets have been eliminated from mandatory tests. A spokesman for the Army and Marines confirmed to the magazine The Atlantic that those changes were intended to reduce the high rates of lower back injury in troops who trained with repetitive sit-up sequences.
However, all of the professionals consulted for this report have had some experience with clients who continue to love classic abs and ask for them to be included in their training routines. If not, they assume they are not working hard enough. It is what the icons have, that it is difficult for them to fall from their altars.
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