The Way You're Training Your Abs is Hurting You

It’s painful to train in a commercial gym and see how everyone is harming their body in the name of fitness.

The focus of this will be ab training, how most people have it completely wrong in their mind, why, and how to fix it.

This is not only the key to having a truly aesthetic six-pack, it’s the key to being robust in sports and protecting your spine.

This is also part of the story of how I have effectively rehabilitated dozens of people from lower back pain, hip and leg instability, and postural issues.

I’ll do my best so that this is the only post you need until you decide to really understand the science of this by doing a course like scientific core conditioning.

Lastly, I hope this reaches a vast number of people because the number of juiced-up influencers posting a bunch of BS on social media is increasing by the minute, which, of course, is causing the next generation of fitness enthusiasts to get trapped in a nebula of conventional groupthink, eventually manifesting into physical dysfunction.

So, if you’re interested in having a six-pack but would also like to have a healthy spine for the rest of your life to go with it, read along.

Crunches

The first and most common mistake people make is that they only train their abs in flexion.

Think about it, you get into the gym and all you see around you is people on the floor doing crunches, or even worse, stacking weight on a crunch machine.

So why is that so bad?

When people do abdominal exercises on flat surfaces, they tend to perpetually shorten the abdominal muscles, which can cause several problems.

Research shows that repeated muscle contractions in a shortened range can lead to a drop in sarcomeres, the contractile units of muscle fibers, within as little as 24 hours.

Over time, the rectus abdominis and external obliques shorten, pulling the chest down and the head forward.

This not only creates aesthetic issues, like sagging breasts for women, but also contributes to poor posture and head positioning, causing further stress on the spine.

The abdominal wall can extend to about 35-70 degrees, but only flex to about 30-40. Such extension is crucial for multiple functional movement patterns, such as throwing.

Taking throwing as an example, if the abs can’t extend sufficiently, the kinetic stress will then fall on the shoulders, increasing the risk of joint injuries and tears.

It can even happen with a simple overhead movement like a barbell press, which, coupled with weak neck muscles, can cause disc herniations... which I have sadly seen.

So lesson number one: don’t do crunches on flat surfaces, crunch machines, or those weird ab-assisting things.

There are other things that will give you a far better ROI.

Ignoring a Key Muscle

If you bend to pick up an object, your belly button should automatically move in towards your spine. It shouldn’t be a conscious thing, meaning that you shouldn’t be thinking about it. It just happens.

If this doesn’t happen, or worse, your belly button moves outwards, we have a problem.

There are many causes for this. Lifting with a weight belt or eating gluten are a few of them (seemingly unrelatable, I know).

What’s happening here is that one of your key spinal stabilizers, your transversus abdominis (TVA), is not working.

Think of this as part of your core’s inner unit—the group of tireless muscles that are tasked with stabilizing your spine.

When these don’t work well, their load falls onto the outer core muscles: the rectus abdominis (visible six-pack), obliques, and spinal erectors.

But none of these muscles are made to work for long periods of time, like the inner stabilizers are.

So, they fatigue quickly, and to fix that, they just clamp and remain stuck and tight. They sacrifice their function so that the spine remains stable.

If you want a systems perspective on the why, you might want to check out the totem pole article.

The verdict here is that we need to test the TVA function and train it appropriately, then begin integrating it with more complex, demanding exercises.

Lesson two: do your vacuums, while maintaining a neutral spine - think cat cow stretch, the cat is excessive lower back curve and the cow is reversed curve, you want to be somewhere in the middle leaning towards the cat, so juct enough curve for your palm to fit in.

The Lower Abdominals

Training the lower abs isn’t just about doing hanging leg raises.

These muscles are atrophied and weak in 9 out of 10 people.

So, they have to be isolated and strengthened before they are used in more complex movements. Otherwise, the hip flexors will most likely take over, leading to more postural problems and tightness.

For this, their strength and coordination have to be assessed using the corresponding tests.

I’ll get into this in detail in a following article, but for now, what will work for everyone is to:

• Lay down supine.

• Bend your knees.

• Put your palm under the small of your back and begin applying pressure to it by drawing your belly button in.

• Now raise each leg up, one by one, and do that for 8-12 times with a 202 tempo.

You have now isolated your lower abdominals.

Most people ignore this exercise series and do much more advanced stuff that their lower abdominals simply aren’t conditioned to sustain.

Result? Hip tightness and back problems.

Lesson three: isolate your lower abs before you do advanced movements.

The X Factor

You can’t speak about core training without engaging the obliques.

The obliques are the muscles that side-bend and rotate our spine. They work in unison in an X fashion to stabilize our core.

This means that the right internal (lower) oblique will work with the left external (upper) oblique and vice versa, making up what is called a sling.

We can train that in the horse stance position, or simply on hands and knees with a neutral spine (explained below).

While making sure our spine is neutral and our head, shoulders, and pelvis are aligned, we raise our hand and opposite knee off the floor by about 2 millimetres and alternate for about 15 repetitions of 202 on each side.

Do that for a few sets a week and notice how everything else you do simply happens more gracefully.

Lesson four: Train your obliques functionally.

Neck

We also need to train the neck—specifically the deep cervical flexors and neck extensors—and release tension in the muscles that are putting it into suboptimal positions.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: the neck is not the core. But we need to approach it as a huge component of this equation.

We’re not doing this to get a “swole” neck; it’s all about alignment and posture.

I saw a video recently from Dr. Mike Israetel, an exercise scientist, critiquing Dr. Huberman, who said that training the neck is essential.

Dr. Mike Israel went on to say that training the neck is “cool,” yet he doesn’t need to do it because he’s taking steroids and doing all sorts of movements.

But the thing is, training the neck is not just cool, it’s essential.

If you don’t integrate the neck’s strength with the rest of the body and the sling systems, you risk injury.

Lesson five? Your neck is equally important; look up exercises on deep cervical flexors and cervical extensors before you do the standard neck curls. I’ll give you room for self exploration on this one.

Infant Development and the Inchworm

The other connection here is the infant development movement series.

There are certain movements, such as the inchworm, which connect the neck to the rest of the body.

If it’s not developed properly, and the neck is not connected well to the rest of the body, it creates a huge strength discrepancy.

Think of a building that can sustain a hurricane, yet its roof blows away with a breeze.

That’s not a strong, unified building.

You can research this yourself but an actionable key here is to never do curls supporting your neck. First curl the neck, then the abdominals and see after how repetitions it takes before each muscle fatigues.

A Look Beyond

This was a lot of info, I know.

My intention is not to overwhelm you but to plant seeds for self-exploration.

We probably agree that the abdominal wall isn’t just for aesthetics; it plays a critical role as a pump mechanism that moves blood and fluids through the body.

It’s also the “core” of our emotional centre.

When people hold their abs tight constantly, it disrupts the diaphragm's movement, resulting in shallow breathing, hyperventilation, and excessive sympathetic tone.

This can lead to anxiety, nervousness, increased tension, and a cascade of biochemical imbalances, including increased cortisol, which in turn can trigger attention deficit behaviours and further complications.

A tight and rigid abdominal wall is a reflection of a tight and rigid emotional body, trapped emotions, behind layers of superficial muscle, aimed at protecting feelings of past hurt.

If you want to flow freely and express yourself, you have to approach training of this area (and training in general) with more grace, science, and wisdom.

And I hope this was a spark. And if you can’t find a way out of persistent chronic back pain, find me here, I’d be happy to see if I can help.