Crunches were once a default workout everyone did in order to get toned abs, but we now have reasons to believe they may be completely unnecessary.
Over the past decade, the fitness industry has changed a lot. Not only we now lift more weights and do less cardio, but it also turned out that some of the exercises we used to do religiously don’t really have much effect. Crunches went from a necessary to obsolete exercise, but what’s the reason for that?
Crunches have been considered a harmful exercise recently because they’re connected to spinal disk injuries. Also, there are many exercises that work multiple core muscles at once, including the abdominal muscles, which makes crunches inefficient and unnecessary.
One of the most frequently cited studies on this topic was published in 2001 and in it, the researchers showed that there’s a connection between spinal flexion and disc damage. To be fair, it was done on pigs, not people, so you probably shouldn’t be too worried if you enjoy benefits from crunches and want to continue doing them.
