No More Sit-ups!

Trainer Craig Ballantyne is a bit of a contrarian. In "3 Substitutions for Situps" he writes:

Conventional thinking says we have to do a whole bunch of sit ups and crunches to get six pack abs. But don't most people hate doing sit ups and crunches?

That's why I don't have these exercises in my workout plans.

Neither of the exercises is necessary to get six pack abs.

Crunches are a huge waste of your time. Such a small movement does little in terms of burning belly fat or sculpting your abs.

Every smart trainer knows that if you can do a resistance exercise 50 times in a row, like you can with crunches, that there is little benefit to body composition.

Situps are a more difficult exercise, but like crunches, sit-ups are hard on the low back. Spinal flexion - when you round your low back - compresses the discs between your vertebrae and is actually the same mechanism that causes disc herniations.

So both are un-necessary and risky moves. Too risky for my tastes.

It's frustrating for the beginner to try to get into a routine, only to see that somebody else has completely different ideas. On the other hand, I'm going to see which of his exercises I can incorporate into my current routine.