Racheal Bachman wrote for the Wall Street Journal that exercise gurus and military experts are pushing for alternate exercises, like plank pose, to prevent back injuries,

For anyone who has struggled on a gym mat, hands behind head, straining to touch elbows to knees, there’s good news: The sit-up’s reign as a workout standard may be ending.

People from high-profile exercise gurus to military experts are arguing that the sit-up, that staple of fitness tests, presents too great a risk of back injury.

A recent editorial in Navy Times, an independent publication that covers the U.S. Navy, called for banishing the sit-up from thephysical-readiness test sailors must pass twice each year. The editorial called it “an outdated exercise today viewed as a key cause of lower back injuries.” The Canadian Armed Forces recently cut the sit-up from its fitness test, citing concern over potential injury and its lack of connection to actual military work.

Tony Horton, creator of the popular P90X video workout series, says he no longer does sit-ups or crunches, their truncated cousins. “I really believe that the traditional, antiquated crunch has seen better days, and it’s time to make a change,” Mr. Horton says.

Sit-ups can put hundreds of pounds of compressive force on the spine, says Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at Canada’s University of Waterloo. In dozens of published studies, Dr. McGill has found that the forces, combined with the repeated flexing motion, in sit-ups can squeeze the discs in the spine. That combination eventually can cause discs to bulge, pressing on nerves and causing back pain, potentially leading to disc herniation.

For people who want to do abdominal exercises from the traditional sit-up start position, Dr. McGill advocates a modified curl-up he developed, with the hands placed underneath the low back and the shoulders barely leaving the floor.

Sit-ups can be done in many ways, including crunches and sit-ups on stability or Swiss exercise balls. The injury risk with modified sit-ups depends on the exact motion and on an individual’s physical limitations. But some fitness instructors have ditched even modified sit-ups.

Cmdr. David Peterson, executive officer for the physical education department at the U.S. Naval Academy, advocates replacing the curl-up in the Navy’s physical-readiness test with plank if the Navy keeps a core-readiness exercise in the test. In a 2013 paper in Strength and Conditioning Journal, he argued that plank was less likely to injure people and more relevant to Navy operations.

When performing real-world tasks, Cmdr. Peterson says, “we typically stabilize the abs so that we’re able to generate more power from the core so we can lift, pull, push, carry. In that sense, sit-ups really don’t prepare us for what we typically use our core for in daily life, or operationally on the battlefield.” He stressed that he was voicing his opinion, not that of the entire Navy.

The Canadian Armed Forces’ overhaul of their longtime fitness test, phased in through last year, emphasizes functional tasks such as lifting a 44-pound sandbag 30 times within 3 1/2 minutes.

“We went away from just measuring core strength by doing sit-ups or push-ups,” says Patrick Gagnon, senior manager of human performance for the Canadian Armed Forces. He says the new test more accurately predicts how well soldiers will perform their jobs.
One study of 1,500 U.S. Army soldiers found that 56% of the injuries related to the Army’s three-part physical fitness test were attributed to sit-ups. The test’s two-mile run portion was associated with 32% of injuries and push-ups with 11%. Overall, injuries affected nearly 8% of all soldiers studied.

Versions of the sit-up remain in the regularly required physical fitness tests for the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy, though three of those tests are under review. (The Coast Guard’s fitness test, which also includes sit-ups, is required only for certain positions.)

The Army in recent years put 10,000 soldiers through a pilot of a revamped physical-fitness test that excluded sit-ups. While the Army is studying the best methods to measure baseline soldier readiness, it’s sticking with its long-standing three-event test: timed push-ups, sit-ups and a two-mile run, a spokesman says.

The Marines and Navy also are reviewing the elements of their tests. The Marines will collect recommendations through July 1. The Navy has no deadline for possible changes to its test, says Lt. Joe Keiley, public affairs officer for the Chief of Naval Personnel.

“We’re certainly looking at ways we can improve it,” Lt. Keiley says.

Schoolchildren demonstrate the curl-up as performed in the FitnessGram health-related fitness assessment. The curl-up is designed to minimize compression in the spine, according to the group that operates the assessment. ENLARGE
Schoolchildren demonstrate the curl-up as performed in the FitnessGram health-related fitness assessment. The curl-up is designed to minimize compression in the spine, according to the group that operates the assessment. PHOTO: THE COOPER INSTITUTE
Many Americans first did sit-ups as part of what is now known as the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, the decades-old, multi-discipline test given to millions of schoolchildren.

The FitnessGram, the health-related fitness assessment tool now most commonly used in school fitness programs, in 1992 replaced the sit-up with a lower-rising curl-up.

“Experts believe it puts less stress on the lower spine and the hip flexors than sit-ups do,” says Laura Fink DeFina, president and CEO of the Dallas-based Cooper Institute, which developed and launched the FitnessGram in 1982.

The sit-up has remarkable staying power. Mark Langowski, a New York-based personal trainer who founded the company Body by Mark, says he hasn’t done a sit-up in 10 years and tells his clients not to do them. Yet earlier this year he found himself supervising the sit-ups of chief meteorologist Ginger Zee on a “Good Morning America” segment about the FBI’s recently adopted fitness test.

“I’m holding her feet and I’m counting her reps and cringing the entire time,” Mr. Langowski says. He says he didn’t speak up because the segment was about whether Ms. Zee could pass the new FBI test, not about the sit-up. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

Mark Langowski, chief executive officer of Body By Mark Wellness and author of ‘Eat This, Not That! for Abs,’ favors alternative exercises to the sit-up, including the side plank.
Mark Langowski, chief executive officer of Body By Mark Wellness and author of ‘Eat This, Not That! for Abs,’ favors alternative exercises to the sit-up, including the side plank.
Another argument against the sit-up: Research suggests it is not the best exercise for strengthening abdominal muscles. A 2010 study in the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy found that exercises using an inflatable Swiss exercise ball activated more muscles than did bent-knee sit-ups or crunches.

John Childs is CEO of Evidence in Motion, a company that trains physical therapists. He says generally available research shows that traditional sit-ups do increase forces and loading on the back but that “from our data, we can’t say that sit-ups cause back pain.”

The most important thing is for people to perform exercises they enjoy so they’ll continue doing them, Dr. Childs says. “Staying active and doing regular exercise the old-fashioned way is far more advantageous than doing nothing,” he says.

But Pete McCall, spokesman for the American Council on Exercise, says he encourages alternative exercises for abdominal muscles. He calls the sit-up “an antiquity of exercise best left in the dustbin of fitness history.”