You hear it time and time again….

“You have to strengthen your abs to get rid of pain in your back.”

I think thats pretty good advice…BUT…NO ONE tells you exactly how to do that!  I’m going to let you in on a little secret:

DOING CRUNCHES WILL NOT HELP YOU OVERCOME BACK PAIN!

Yep.  Thats right.  Why?  Simple.

How do most people, including those with back pain, stand?  You guessing it, with pretty crappy posture. The chest is sunken, complete with forward head posture, and a pelvis that has a massive anterior pelvic tilt.

When the chest drops, and the shoulders round, commonly called a “upper cross syndrome”, then the upper portion of the abs are shortened, and usually tight.  The lower portion of the abs, are usually weakened.  (Yes, you do have lower abs, but not how you think, the muscle is separated NEUROLOGICALLY).  The external and internal oblique muscles are usually the ones taking a nap.  These muscles are responsible for the posterior tilt of the pelvis, which goes hand and hand with flattening the curve of the lower back.

If you look at the position you are in during a crunch, and and stand up from there, what do you get? Exactly…shitty posture.  Sunken chest, etc.  What I am saying is that performing crunches for the majority of the back pain suffering population will make MANY people much worse off.

What you NEED to focus on is strengthening the abdominal muscles which are primarily responsible for posteriorly tilting the pelvis, which are the obliques.

So…you may be wondering, “how the heck do I do that?”

Learning pelvic tilting, of course!

I’m going to shoot a few short clips with my cool little Flip video recorder this weekend, and I’ll post them up in a few days.

–Sam Visnic