Sinett - Sit-ups Are Stupid & Crunches Are Crap: How to Strengthen Your Core, Get Great Abs and Conquer Back Pain

SIT-UPS ARE STUPID AND CRUNCHES ARE CRAP:
How to Strengthen Your Core, Get Great Abs, and Conquer Back Pain

Copyright 2020 by Todd Sinett

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by

EAST END PRESS

Bridgehampton, NY

ISBN: 9781732491243

Ebook ISBN: 9781732491250

First Edition

Book Design by Neuwirth & Associates

Cover Design by Neuwirth & Associates

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, once said, When you innovate, youve got to be prepared for everyone telling you [that] you are nuts. Well, quite frankly, I am feeling nutty.

T ITLE GOT YOUR attention? Goodbecause you should never do a sit-up or any version of a crunch ever again. Dont do them with your legs up, dont do them with your legs down, dont do them on a ball, dont do them against a wall, simply dont ever do them at all!

Conventional wisdom says abdominal and core training should consist of sit-ups and crunches. Trainers, professional athletes, and the average exerciser follow this approach, but working your abs and core according to these training practices is downright harmful. The truth is that doing sit-ups and crunches is physiologically reckless.

But dont worry: there are other, healthier ways to get great abs, and this book will teach you the proper ways to get them without compromising your back and neck health.

First things first. Who am I, and how am I qualified to tell you how to work out your abs? What makes me more knowledgeable than your fitness trainer who has you drop and do 100 crunches? Heres my story:

My name is Dr. Todd Sinett, and I am a second-generation chiropractor, as well as a certified fitness trainer. I happened to have a father who was one of the most innovative doctors I have ever known. My father would say that he wasnt always this way but rather learned his inquisitive approach when, as a chiropractor, he suffered from severe debilitating back pain that kept him bedridden for nine months. Frustrated that every known profession was treating him unsuccessfully, including his own, he studied everything there is to know about back pain from bed.

Thankfully, he finally found a doctor with a different approach. This doctor found that sugar, which was a staple of my fathers diet, irritated his digestive system and caused his severe back spasms. Turns out, anything that can upset the digestive system can reflex and then affect the muscular system of the back.

Though certainly skeptical, my father was willing to try anything. He completely changed his diet, and within two weeks my father was cured.

The doctor, aptly named Dr. Goodheart, reasoned that the majority of people lead unhealthy lifestyles. If you follow the vast majority, you will be resigned to live an unhealthy life, too, he said. He encouraged my father to see with his own eyes, listen with his own ears, and not be afraid to go against the grain. Well, my father spent his entire professional career doing just that, and in 1995 I joined my father in practice, armed with my very own inquisitive approach.

In 2008, my father (before his passing) and I wrote a book called The Truth About Back Pain , which explains that the vast majority of us suffer from back pain because we only receive one-third of the diagnosis and treatment options. Our premise is that back pain comes from not one but three sources:

1. Structural issues such as muscles, discs, and bones
2. Nutritional issues (remember, we are what we eat)
3. Emotions or stress

If you only address one factor of back pain, it makes it impossible to successfully treat back pain.

As both my fathers reputation and my own grew, patients would not just seek us out for their back problems but also for many other physical ailments, such as headaches, foot pain, neck pain, groin problems, and more. Professional athletes, famous movies stars, and business leaders were looking for our help for their myriad ailments. I have treated people on the sidelines of major sporting events, been flown to movie sets, and have worked backstage at Madison Square Garden before a sold-out show.

I am sharing with you my background not to impress you but rather to impress upon you that, as Dr. Goodheart said, the majority of peopleeven famous peoplelead unhealthy lifestyles. Most people, I have seen, know little about properly training their abdominals. I have worked with professional athletes, dancers, and trainers, and regardless of their access to the best training practices, they, too, are suffering from core imbalance. I am not some trainer who is writing an abs book just because they train a famous personI am a doctor who is writing an abs book because I have seen way too many people who have great-looking abs and terrible back pain.

For the past twenty-five years, I have been working with a vast majority of patients ultimately suffering from imbalanced cores. I can no longer sit idly by and let destructive exercise practices (namely sit-ups and crunches) continue to dominate our workouts. What is vital to understand is that there are healthy ways to obtain great-looking abs and unhealthy ways to obtain them.

After the release of The Truth About Back Pain , I continued to fine-tune my theories and treatments for back pain and published a self-diagnostic and treatment book called 3 Weeks to a Better Back in 2016 and The Ultimate Backbridge Stretch Book , a photo stretch book that allows you to safely and gently stretch any part of your body, in 2017. For a lot of people, flexibility is a missing link to health, and The Ultimate Backbridge Stretch Book helps you reclaim your posture, alignment, and flexibility. I also published a book in 2018 called The Back Pain Relief Diet , which elaborates on the undiscovered key of back pain: your diet.

I have explored the various causes of back pain in my books, but I decided I wanted to write an entire book dedicated to the abs and our current exercise regime. Why? Because core work is one of the leading structural causes of back and neck pain that most doctors never explore. Again, why ? Because everyone assumes exercise is healthy and that fitness instructors know what they are talking about.

This book is intended to hone in deeper on the structure of your body, highlight core imbalance as caused by your current abdominal workout regimen, and give you different, healthier exercises for your body and your back. Every body is unique, but one thing Ive realized is that almost nobody should be doing sit-ups or crunches.

My book will provide you with the road map on how to get great-looking abs in a way that maintains core balance. This book is for:

1. Anyone who wants to lose their gut, get healthy abs, a balanced core, and better posture, and heal their pain.
2. Anyone who is looking for a great workout guide for any fitness level, from the beginners all the way up to the fitness experts.
3. The couch potato and the person who never wanted to do sit-ups or crunch exercises in the first place. This book is your validation not to do them. While I do hope it will inspire you to get flat abs in a healthier way, I am pretty happy to help you stick it to that exercise know-it-all.