Why did abdominal exercises, which cause back pain, become common practice in physical education?
Many people have had the hard time in childhood physical education classes when they had to do sit-ups while their classmates held down their legs. This is also true in the United States, and the American monthly magazine The Atlantic summarizes why sit-ups, which have long been synonymous with abdominal muscle training, were introduced into the educational field and then abandoned.
The Death of the Sit-Up - The Atlantic
According to The Atlantic, abdominal muscles became popular in the United States as a result of urbanization that began in the 19th century. Concerns that America would transform from a nation of energetic farmers into a nation of sedentary city dwellers were a particular concern for the military, which needed strong soldiers.
These anxieties influenced American thinking for a long time, leading to a trend of incorporating military-style training into civilian physical education. Then, in the 1940s, the U.S. Army introduced sit-ups to the exams and physical training of its officer candidates, which led to the widespread adoption of sit-ups across the United States. This, according to The Atlantic, is the direct reason why children have been required to do sit-ups for over half a century.
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However, as our understanding of body movement and muscle function improved, abdominal exercises began to decline in popularity starting in the mid-2000s. Pete McCall, an instructor at the American College of Sports Medicine, explained why: 'The early anatomists removed the tissue around the muscles and assumed that the abdominal muscles were necessary for spinal movement.' He pointed out that this was because people began to understand that specific muscles don't move in isolation.
While it's true that six-pack abs, or rectus abdominis, are the most visible muscle in a toned abdomen, it's now understood that many other muscles are involved in torso movement, including the diaphragm, obliques, erector spinae , and pelvic floor muscles . This has led to the term 'core' replacing 'abs' in fitness jargon. However, it took decades for this understanding to take hold, during which time misconceptions based on outdated anatomy became widely accepted.
According to McCall, the earliest exercises targeting specific muscles, including the abdominals, were adopted by bodybuilders who wanted to work each muscle individually. In particular, the idea of 'spot training,' which aims to reduce fat and increase muscle mass by targeting specific muscles, has remained popular among exercise novices looking to get rid of their belly fat.
McCall credits Canadian back pain expert
For example, McGill has studied the movements of belly dancers and says, 'Belly dancers repeatedly bend their spine without much injury. This means that bending the spine under no load doesn't have much impact on the spine. The problem comes when they bend the spine repeatedly under higher loads.'
When the spine is bent under load, stress is placed on the intervertebral discs, so agricultural workers who frequently perform tasks such as loading crops onto trucks are more likely to suffer from lower back pain later in life. For this reason, in recent years, people have been advised to 'lift heavy objects with your legs, not your back.' However, sit-ups and crunches are the opposite of this, requiring you to bend your spine repeatedly without using your legs. This is why sit-ups are said to cause lower back pain. While some people do sit-ups without hurting their lower backs, McGill pointed out that being able to do a lot of sit-ups depends on genetic factors such as a light skeleton, so sit-ups are not effective for military or school tests or training.
This reassessment of sit-ups' effectiveness led the US military to either remove them from required testing and training, or combine them with more orthopedically correct exercises like planks . And as the military abandoned sit-ups, civilian trainers also began to discourage them.
However, new information can take time to sink in, so sit-ups are still sometimes performed. 'A good trainer will educate their clients, but sadly, some clients don't feel like they've had a good workout unless they do two or three sets of sit-ups,' McCall said.
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