Although they have never really been much of a staple in my program design, I have stopped doing any sit-ups and crunches with my clients. In the past, I have had my clients doing some stick crunches and medicine ball sit ups during my core routine (along with bridges, planks and quadruped exercises).

I had heard about other coaches taking them out of their programs, particularly Coach Boyle, and although I thought he made sense, I didn't feel I really needed to eliminate them since they were a small part of the program.

As I thought about it though, it made more sense to me that the population that I mostly work with, golfers and executives, should really avoid crunches and sit-ups.

Why?

First of all, crunches and sit-ups reinforce poor posture.  According to Eeric Truumees, MD, in his article "Back Pain Prevention, 5 Harmful Habits," poor posture "places an enormous amount of stress on the spine."  Crunches and sit-ups involve spinal flexion and too much flexion of the spine can lead to disc problems over time.  We have enough ways to ruin our back, why are we doing it in the gym?

Second, with golfers, we always talk about posture.  One of the first things that teaching pros will talk about with students is having good posture.  If you have a rounded upper back with your shoulders slumped forward at address, commonly called a C-Posture, "it will be very difficult to keep your posture in the backswing without keeping it short and wide," according to TPI.   You get much less rotation when you are hunched over in C-Posture.  Below is a picture of TPI co-founder Dave Phillips showing good and bad posture.

Picture courtesy of www.MyTPI.com

So now think about the crunch and the sit-up.  Basically, they just reinforce that poor posture.  I rotated the picture to give you a better look at this idea. Look at at the red line on Alex's back and compare it to the pictures above.

Take into account all the hunched over positions we are in from sitting, commuting, texting on the Blackberry and working on the computer.  Then we go to the gym to do sit ups and work too much on chest and bicep muscles and not enough upper back; more reinforcement of poor posture.

OK, so how do we work our abs?

Besides the planks and side planks that I have my clients doing for core stabilization, I still have a few exercises that involve using the abs, except just not in isolation.

Those exercises include Turkish Get Ups, Medicine Ball Slams and Stability Ball Rollouts.  I will go over those in the next few posts.

Anthony Renna, Titleist CGFI

Anthony is a Certified Golf Fitness Instructor (Titleist) , a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA), and a Sports Performance Coach (USAW)  who works with elite and recreational golfers.  Anthony has been working with golfers for almost 25 years, starting out as a caddie at Century Country Club in Westchester, NY.  He is founder of Five Iron Fitness, a golf-specific personal training company; www.GolfFitnessProducts.net, a resource for all things golf fitness; and www.BetterGolfwithFitness, a blog discussing the current issues in golf fitness. 

Anthony is also the host of the Better Golf with Fitness Podcast.

The articles at GolfFitnessProducts.net are for informational purposes only and are not intended to substitute for direct examination and exercise prescription by the appropriate health professional.  It is strongly recommended that you do not perform any exercise program without the consent of your personal physician.