Thursday, February 22, 2007

Truth About Ab Training & Drawing in Your Navel

There never should have been a need for this ab training article to ever have been written. But for years, poorly educated personal trainers have been obsessed with the "drawing your spine to your belly button" recommendation for their clients.

Read the NY Times Article HERE

Had any of these well-meaning, but not-so-well-skilled trainers lifted weights themselves, they would have realized the fallacy of this recommendation. Try squatting with a heavy weight with your abs hollowed. Doesn't work very well.

That's why I never jumped on the "spine to your belly button bandwagon". I've been recommending to clients to brace their abs for years, because not only have I read Dr. McGill's book "Ultimate Low Back Fitness & Performance" (twice), AND driven to Waterloo University to meet with him personally, but I've also been lifting for years and know that you have to have a strongly braced torso if you want to lift heavy weights.

Too many personal trainers today have not challenged themselves with hard lifting, but still take it upon themselves to try and teach their clients hard lifting technique. It would be like me teaching skydiving. Just because you've watched others do it, doesn't make you an expert.

Read the article, re-evaluate your ab training, and train your torso safely and effectively. Needless to say, all of the TT workouts are designed based on Dr. McGill's recommendations. So I'm sorry, but there aren't any "navel drawingin" exercises or thousand-situps-per-day workouts in the TT manuals.

Leave it to a NYC newspaper to put this article in their fashion and style section,

CB
www.TTMembers.com
www.TurbulenceTraining.com
www.WorkoutManuals.com

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