Myths of crunches

The crunch is one of the most popular abdominal exercises. It primarily works the rectus abdominals muscle and also works the obliques.Crunches offer numerous health benefits, including that they tone and strengthen your abdominals, which helps you maintain proper alignment of your spine and lower your risk of back pain. Crunches may be the most iconic abdominal exercise around, but doing crunches is not actually the best way to slim your midsection. Crunches, sit-ups, planks and other abs exercises will never get rid of belly fat. They may tone the muscles that lie beneath that fat, but you’ll never know for sure unless you start spending your exercise time more wisely.Crunches don’t have the capability, however, to reduce the size of your stomach or make an impact on any excess fat you have at your tummy. To flatten your stomach, you’ve got to create a caloric deficit with regular bouts of calorie-burning exercise and by eating healthy.A flat stomach is made in the kitchen. What you eat and drink and how much you eat and drink will have a much bigger impact on your waistline than any exercise can. It would take 30 – 60 minutes of heart-pumping, grunting and groaning exercise to burn off a single serving of any of these high-calorie foods. That might not sound so bad until you consider that you’re not trying to burn off the calories you just ate, you’re trying to burn off the ones you ate a week or a month or a year ago – you’re trying to lose the flab! So shore up your diet first, and then you can worry about the next step to getting a flat stomach. Although crunches won’t help you flatten your stomach, they’re still beneficial and worthy of finding their way into your workouts. If you are doing crunches, make sure to use proper form: Otherwise, they may put your spine in a painful curved position.