Which Ab Workout Equipment You Should NOT Use!
Here's a switch
Here's a switch. While everybody else in the universe is telling you want ab workout equipment to buy or use, I'm going to go a different route and fill you in on what NOT to use.
It's just as important to know what to avoid as to know what to use. If you end up using the WRONG equipment, you could end up either getting a counterproductive result or, even worse, injuring yourself.
A lot of people try to minimize the importance of avoiding injury, as if only a wuss avoids injury. Perhaps people think of injuries as something to just shrug off. I can tell you, as a chiropractor with ten years of experience in treating overuse and sprain/strain injuries, a lot of injuries can stop an athlete in their tracks.
It's simple. They take a long time to heal, and while they're healing, you can't put a lot of stress on that area (think "exercise"). If I pull a muscle, you're usually talking six to eight weeks to rehab it properly.
Oh, and if you think you're going to just be a tough guy and "push through it", good luck with that. You'll just keep re-tearing the same tissue over and over again, like picking at a scab and never letting it heal. Even if it eventually does heal, you'll have so much scar tissue built up that the area in question will never work properly again.
The bottom line is, you don't want an injury. So what causes injuries with abs training?
Usually, the problem arises in the lower back. Specifically, the joints of the lower spine. Luckily for you, you've a chiropractor (me) about to teach you how to avoid this problem.
The joints of the lower spine are lined up in such a way that they glide past each other (rather than a ball and socket joint like the hip). The angle of these lower spine joints go front to back.
To visualize this, press your hands flat in front of you in the prayer position. Slide them back and forth. They slide front to back, right? If you tried to move one of your hands toward the left or right, you mash up against the other hand.
The same thing happens in your lower back. When you bend forward or backward at the waist, those joints glide past each other properly. When you bend straight to the side, you tend to jam those joints together.
This isn't a big problem if the resistance is light- your body simply stops at the end of the normal range of motion in this direction. But if you're straining under heavy resistance- like with a plate loaded machine, or straining against a heavy dumbbell- then you can push that joint past its normal limits and injure it.
You've run into this before if you've hurt yourself shoveling snow. You twisted at the lower spine under resistance trying to fling a heavy pile of snow and jammed those joints together.
So, to avoid this at the gym, avoid ab exercise equipment that involves any sort of heavy twisting or bending motion in the lower torso. By heavy, I mean anything over about ten-fifteen pounds. So that horrible dumbbell side bend I see everybody doing has got to go.
Beyond injury, any sort of heavy resistance in the abs may create a counterproductive effect- building bulk. The heavier the resistance, the bigger a muscle gets- including the abs. Is this really an area you want to bulk up?
Probably not. So once again, any ab exercise equipment that involves heavy resistance is a bad choice.
Personally, I like to stick to medicine balls (usually eight to ten pounds) or stability balls as the only ab equipment to use. Stick to the light resistance and don't force your joints to move in the wrong direction, and your training be much more productive.
Which Ab Workout Equipment You Should NOT Use!
By: Healthy Andy
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