sit-ups

I have often written about the elegance of people in bygone years. The women, sometimes corseted, show striking deportment.

This young woman shows wonderful alignment and poise in an age when corsets were commonly worn. Corsets encouraged abdominal support, a tall straight spine, and the behind behind. Pinterest

The excesses of nineteenth-century fashion understandably gave corsets a bad name. Extreme tight lacing had some terrible effects, imposing some drastic anatomical remodeling:

The stomach and liver are crammed down, with the ribs compressing into drooping S-loops. The neural spines of each vertebra, the little projections that stick up from the central body of each bone, are also pushed out of place. Normally they stack nicely one atop the other in a neat midline ridge, but in long-term corset wearers these spindles of bone jut to this side or that.

Science writer Brian Switek in Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone.

The extremes of nineteenth century corsetry had unhealthy effects, including restricting breathing and digestion (left). Wikimedia

The majority of people nowadays enjoy the freedom of not wearing a corset, and are understandably determined never to return there. However, some kinds of external corset, well chosen and used judiciously, can have protective benefits for the lower back area. They can also serve as a training tool for developing a stronger, healthier, inner corset. Let’s consider this in more detail.

External corsets can offer protection in some contexts

Belts and corsets are often worn by manual workers—for lifting heavy goods at Home Depot, for example. The extra stability they give the trunk can be protective in awkward maneuvers, when workers are tired, if they have previous injuries, or are vulnerable due to a weak “inner corset.” 

A corset provides extra protection for the lumbar spine, which, unlike the thoracic spine, is not protected by the architecture of the ribcage. Ninelife.uk

Another common use for external corsets is in weight lifting. In this case, should the natural inner corset fail and the considerable weight over challenge the lifter, a resultant twist or buckle of the spine could cause serious injury. The corset will guard against this and also help the lifter to maintain length and space in the lumbar area despite the compressive force from the weights. 

   
A weightlifter protects his lower back with a belt. Unsplash

External corsets can be useful training aids

A corset or belt can give a feeling of strength and stability that you want your own muscles to provide. A corset or belt can be used as a reminder and a training tool. External corsets can be used as supplements to your own inner corset musculature, not instead of it, when bending, lifting and carrying.

Healthy posture trains your  inner corset

Healthy posture naturally strengthens your inner corset. Poor posture will lead you to slump and collapse your inner corset, or sway and make your back muscles overwork and tighten. Either way, your inner corset is sidelined, making you more vulnerable to injury and degenerative spinal conditions.

Some traditional cultures wear external corsets

Some societies have integrated corsets into their traditional dress. Members of the Dinka tribe from Southern Sudan, Africa, wear surprisingly rigid corsets with metal ribbing and beading to show their status. These are worn day and night for years. The corsets allow no appreciable flexion, extension, side-bending, or twisting, yet the excellent physique of the young men and women who wear them is testimony to how little spinal movement may be necessary to preserve good health.

A member of the Dinka tribe wearing a corset. Note that the L5-S1 area is allowed to assume its normal curvature.

Another corset-like garment, this time from East Asia, is the Japanese obi, or sash, worn in various styles with different types of kimonos. Nowadays they are mainly reserved for bridal wear. Over the centuries, owing to their increasing ornamental width and stiffness, other more functional belts would be tied underneath to close the kimono.

A woman tying the obi of a geisha in the 1890s. Wikimedia

Gokhale Method students can make use of corsets

Some of our students have explored wearing corsets. Alumna Fatimah has experimented with very different types of corsets. She tells us that in the old days in Java the kemben, an item of traditional clothing she knows from her Indonesian heritage, was similar in function to the modern bustier, and was worn with a sarong (wrap around skirt). However, nowadays most people would wear a sarong with a corset over it, and a kebaya (longer blouse/jacket, sheer and often lacy) on top. Fatimah remembers her grandmother wrapping herself in a sash that acted as a corset over her sarong, with a long straight kebaya on top.

A woman wearing a kemben, the traditional Indonesian female torso wrap, circa 1900.
The traditional kemben is worn by wrapping a piece of cloth around the torso, folding and securing the edge, tying it with binding, and then covering it with a sash or angkin around the abdomen. Today, there are also tight-fitting and tailored kemben secured using buttons, straps, or zippers similar to the Western corset. Wikimedia

Modern shapewear as a corset

Modern shapewear is, as the name suggests, usually worn to achieve a smooth and shapely body contour—in the case of the corset, while reducing the waist. The sensation of wearing it can provide a reminder to engage the deep abdominal muscles. Fatimah discovered a shapewear corset via her hairdresser, who uses it while working to prevent back pain. Fatimah comments:

If I wear it high, covering my lower ribs, it reminds me to engage my rib anchor, keeping my front ribs down and flush with my torso and avoiding swaying my back. I actually don’t find it comfortable to wear for long periods, so I’m getting good at remembering to use my rib anchor without it!

 A SKIMS corset, a modern piece of shapewear in a style made popular by Kim Kardashian. Pinterest

Ideally, we all have a strong, natural inner corset

Since our first human ancestors stood upright some 5–7 million years ago, we have acquired not only a J-spine but also a strong matrix of tissues designed to support and protect it. (You can read more about spine shape here.) We evolved perfectly to do this. Unfortunately, about one hundred years ago, our industrialized culture took a wrong turn in notions about healthy posture. Going forward into modern times, we have exported a distorted view of human posture to much of the world through our design, fashion, and manufacturing. This unraveling of global postural health and traditions is explained in more detail in my book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Fortunately, there remain traditional societies where healthy, pain-free posture is still intact, and they provide precious role models for us to learn from. The Gokhale Method® in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, and our online Elements course, teaches how to stand, bend, walk, and even sit as these people do. The inner corset is also explained in detail in my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

The muscles of the inner corset include the deep intrinsic back muscles, the abdominis transversus, and the obliques. 

This young mother in Burkina Faso is using her inner corset to remain tall, stable, and relaxed while carrying on her head with her baby on her back. Headloading, done well, can encourage the inner corset to engage and the spine to align. Traditional posture principles really work!  

Strengthening your inner corset

There are few of us who can’t do without some attention to our inner corset. What you don’t want to do is common ab exercises such as the aptly named crunches, which squish your discs and crunch your spine, or, worse, sit-ups. You can read more about ab exercises here.

We recommend you start by learning to use your rib anchor, an ingredient of your inner corset, which will prevent you from swaying and compressing your lumbar area. You can watch our free rib anchor video here. 
If you would like guidance on any aspect of your posture, including ways to cultivate your inner corset and protect your back, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online or in person, with a Gokhale Method teacher.

This is our second blog post in the series where we put popular exercises under scrutiny to examine how they stack up—or not—against the principles of healthy posture. Here we are looking at crunches, a common abdominal exercise.

Crunches are often seen as a better targeted and safer 
abdominal exercise than sit-ups—but there is still a downside.

Crunches are done lying down on the floor, face up, knees bent with feet on the floor, and with the hands placed behind or to the side of the head. They involve using the muscles of the rectus abdominis and the obliques to repeatedly raise and lower the upper body. 

Crunches are well named—they crunch your discs and crunch your nerves. Lifting the weight of the head—which at around 11 lb. or 5 kg is the weight of an average bowling ball—can put considerable strain on your neck and threaten its delicate structures. It also encourages rounding of the back and shoulders, as you can see in the above photo. We recommend against this exercise.

Doing poorly designed exercises and overtraining the “six-pack” muscles will encourage a tucked pelvis
and a rounded upper spine. Freepik

Why are crunches so popular?

People in our culture are conditioned to feel more attractive when they have a flat stomach and an impressive six-pack, and so may turn to all manner of treatments, diet regimens, and abdominal exercises to target this area. People who have experienced an episode of debilitating back pain also want, quite understandably, to strengthen their abs and core in order to protect their back. 

Do most people need to strengthen their abs?

   
Parking the pelvis forward is a common postural habit that pushes into the groins and compresses the lower back. It indicates that the deep abdominal muscles are not engaged and prevents them from fulfilling their postural role. Freepik

Most people in our culture sit, stand, bend, and walk in ways that actually discourage their abdominal muscles from working in their day-to-day lives. Those who either arch or round their backs are holding themselves upright with their back muscles or stressing their joints. With these poor posture habits the “inner corset” (deep muscles of the abdomen and lower back) is not recruited to perform its natural role and becomes progressively weaker. 

This woman in Burkina Faso and man in Brazil use their inner corset in their everyday tasks.

Learning healthy posture as taught in our online Elements course and in-person Gokhale [Go-clay]Method Foundations Course holistically addresses this problem. In the courses we teach specific, well-chosen exercises designed to jump-start weak muscles and awaken your inner corset. Some of these are illustrated in Appendix 1 of my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Are crunches a safer exercise than sit-ups?

Crunches are often regarded as a safer and better choice of abdominal exercise than sit-ups. And they are. The Canadian Armed Forces discontinued the use of sit-ups in training and physical-fitness tests due to the large numbers of injuries caused to their personnel. The U.S. military also has a plan to phase them out by 2021. Stuart McGill, Professor of Spine Biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a leading researcher on the subject, points to numerous studies that show that repeated sit-ups, which load the discs in a particularly dangerous direction, cause bulging, sequestrated, and herniated discs as well as spinal nerve damage. 

Neither of these people doing crunches have healthy form. Their necks are doing too much, and the man is also tucking his pelvis. Crello

Gym instructors often prefer crunches over sit-ups because they are safer and result in less tension in the psoas (hip flexors). But are they safe enough? 

In our view, classic rounded crunches are still a risky, disc-compressing exercise which encourage tension in the groin, while also training the body in poor postural form (tucking the pelvis and rounding the upper back and neck).

Doing a crunch twisting the head towards the knee encourages the neck to do too much and the pelvis to tuck. Crello

Rounded crunches are sometimes done with a twist at the waist to work the abs more obliquely. This is often done by bringing up the entire upper body and reaching one elbow towards the knee of the opposite leg. 

Effective ab exercises that are healthy for your posture

There are healthy alternatives to crunches that give your abdominal muscles a good workout! 

Our healthy and posture-positive version of this exercise keeps the head supported in the hands. The arm on the side to which you are turning continues to be supported on the ground. You can watch Gokhale Method Fitness teacher Eric Fernandez performing the exercise in this video. You will see that he maintains his spinal alignment throughout the exercise, rather than tucking and rounding his torso. 

When doing this exercise:

• Support your head in your hands and relax your neck 
• Rest your upper arm on the floor as you turn towards it, lifting the opposite arm and shoulder from the floor
• Do not pull your head forward
• Do not tuck your pelvis
• Aim for small, smooth, accurate movements

If your abdominal muscles are weak or you are currently or intermittently experiencing back pain, then we recommend that you start with a less challenging exercise. To correctly identify and safely bring your abdominal obliques and other upper abdominal muscles to a healthy baseline tone, we recommend first watching this Gokhale Method rib anchor exercise video, and then learning to use your inner corset. The inner corset is explained in detail in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

Free Chapter of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

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If you are looking for a way to exercise regularly that is healthy for your back and improves your posture, sign up for our Gokhale Exercise Free Trial:

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Read our Home Exercises Part 1 blog post on Cobra here.