I received an e-mail from a fellow fitness professional this morning, which simply said this:
Don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but holy s***, un-freakin-beleeeevable:
Hopefully these NBA players are just endorsing it and not using it. But it’s fooling the public nonetheless!! Keep up the great blog and articles!!!
Other than having an uncontrollable urge to throw my eyeballs into a pool full of piranhas, I’m utterly speechless after having watched that. It amazes me the lengths that some “experts” will go to make a buck.
1. Causes imbalance, which forces our abs and body to work harder? Riiiiigggghhhhtttt. Cause you know, we want to make our athletes capable of producing less force and reinforcing aberrant motor patterns; not to mention make them weaker.
2. Add another 20 degrees of extension= 8x more work for your abs compared to crunches alone!!!!! OMG, that’s amazing! Too bad it’s completely irrelevant! First off, other than my six year old nephew, who references the Air Force as their lone source of scientific data? Secondly, it’s a huge misconception that spinal range of motion is correlated with spine health and/or improved performance. Third, what happens to a metal rod when you continuously bend it back and forth? It breaks; or at the very least, is weakened dramatically. The same can be said of your spine when you go into constant flexion and HYPER-extension. Does that sound like something that’s healthy or wise to do on a consistent basis?
(Hint: looking at random pictures of Kelly Brook= HEALTHY. Ohhhhhhh, so very healthy. Performing abdominal exercises on a poorly designed apparatus with total disregard for spinal end range of motion= not healthy).
Needless to say, this kind of stuff really bothers me, and it’s rather disconcerting the information that the general public is exposed to by these infomercials that do nothing but perpetuate lies and cater to those that are looking for that “magic pill.” Then again, who am I kidding? The Downs Disc will undoubtedly sell hundreds of thousand of copies and all I’ve done today is spend all morning debating whether or not Governor Palin qualifies as MILF material and playing Duck Hunt on my Nintendo. Pwwww, Pwwww, Pwwww.
