Crunches are a waste of time?

Yesterday I was going through the different e-mail newsletters I usually get every day (I get about 15 different ones) and there's this one fitness expert that I won't mention but you would recognize the name right away, that has a disliking for Ab Crunches and Sit-Ups.

Claiming most people hate doing them and that there's no real benefit to doing high reps Crunches and Sit-Up work. Saying stuff like:

"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."

or

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

So if you can do a resistance exercise like, say... Rowing Squats 50 times in a row, it's worthless?

What if you can do 100 to 250 reps of that exercise?

I don't know about you but when I do High Reps bodyweight squats, or push-ups, or Abs, I feel the benefit to body composition.

High Rep Crunches and Sit-Ups do more than sculpt your abs, it makes them punch proof.

I guess it depends what your going for, just showing off your abs so they look good or if you're a martial artist like me, you want them (Abs) to save you when someone's landing powerful body shots to your mid-section during your sparring drills.

We just need to find who has the most experience when it comes to crunches and sit-ups. Someone who's been there, in the trenches and tested if what this expert has been saying makes any sense. Where could we go to get real world experience?

Boxing.

George Chuvalo

Boxing has been around for a long time, all boxers do High reps crunches and abs to create a well conditioned, un-breakable shell. None of them would settle for 50 reps of any ab exercise. They do them like we do them, in the thousand rep ranges, just like George Chuvalo used to do them on an old training video I found of him.

If you want to find out more about our Ab Workout Program covering functional Crunches and Sit-Ups for the martial artist handbook, it will be available very shortly.

Until next time,

Master Yourself,

Sibok Martin