Pilates Scene

The ongoing issue – are ab exercises hurting your back?

“There’s so much mythology out there about the core,” maintains Stuart McGill, a highly regarded professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a back-pain clinician who has been crusading against ab exercises that require hollowing your belly. “The idea has reached trainers and through them the public that the core means only the abs. There’s no science behind that idea.”

McGill’s website contains a few articles, DVD’s and books. You can read a couple of his contentious articles here, topics include abdominal raking and super stiffness.