Bycicle crunches hurt my neck!

Everyone who does not do them correctly has that problem. Tell me, when was the last time you needed to be on your back doing crunches for anything essential to life.

And, avid user - you know that your spine can only handle so many sit ups and crunches before it fails. Add some weight and decrease the reps.

Power vacuums - bipedal
Plank - quadripedal
Rotational exercises - bipedal

Supine core exercises are accidents waiting to happen.

Me too I accept I've got a bad neck and just don't do them. Just do normal crunches, slanting my knees to the side. It may not be as good but sore neck and migraine isn't good either.

Make sure you're keeping your elbows wide and crunching from your stomach, not your head/neck. Your shoulders through your head should all move in the same plane.

An alternative that might help.....sit all the way up, twisting to the side so that when you finish, you're looking sideways 90 degrees from your leg angle. Again keep those elbows out wide, use your fingertips behind your head so you're not lifting it up with your arms. Still works those obliques, and they don't make my neck as sore.

I do them by lightly touching my fingertips to the back of my earlobes, which does 2 things: 1. stops me from pulling on my neck, which 2. forces me to use my core more.

If the core is designed to stabilise, how does crunching it up make it stable or exercise it to be stable.

Get a credit card and keep moving it back and forth. Tell me what you have done to the stable plastic after a few hundred bends of the credit card.

The credit card analogy does not apply. Plastic is not living tissue. If you continually flex your plastic card, it will eventually break. But if you strengthen the muscles in your trunk, including your abs, lower back muscles, hip flexors, obliques, etc, you will have better balance and greater ability to lift things (in real life, not in the gym), without injuring your back.

True there are many other good core exercises, but crunches and bicycles, when done with proper form, are great exercises.

You are out of date, the credit card analogy does apply your rectus abdominus have no reason to crunch, nor to assist in bicycle crunches. They are not even the best exercises to strengthen nor grow them as a muscle group. They are proven to damage your body and to carry on doing them is to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Core is about stability, anti-flexion, to rotate through the hips activating the transverse abdominus and the obliques but anti-rotation of the spine. The rectus abdominus would be like a hamstring if it were meant to crunch.

There is no reason to perform any exercise on your back, we are bipeds and functionally all exercises should reflect our bipedal nature. And aviduser as you are a cyclist you should be welll aware of lower back problems of cyclists and poor core strength, but carry on believing that crunches are good, all the sports scientists, all the strength and conditioning coaches, all the top bodybuilders, all the physiotherapists and oesteopaths will beg to differ and based on the evidence that I have read about I agree. Supine crunches are stupid and damaging and serve no purpose as to what the muscles evolutionary design is intended for and that is anti-flexion you are better off doing extending exercises not contractions.

Spine, lumbar, discs, tendons, nerves and then muscle - it is not the muscle that wears it is the rest of the spinal construction. And it behaves exactly like a credit card - bang broken because you caused the body to do exactly the opposite as to its purpose.

That's why I don't do them. My chiropractor advises against it too.

Are you keeping your eyes up and looking at/toward the ceiling?

Then don't do them! Those are not the only exercise to do for your core.. I prefer different planks myself.

The credit card analogy does not apply. Plastic is not living tissue. If you continually flex your plastic card, it will eventually break. But if you strengthen the muscles in your trunk, including your abs, lower back muscles, hip flexors, obliques, etc, you will have better balance and greater ability to lift things (in real life, not in the gym), without injuring your back.

True there are many other good core exercises, but crunches and bicycles, when done with proper form, are great exercises.

You are out of date, the credit card analogy does apply your rectus abdominus have no reason to crunch, nor to assist in bicycle crunches. They are not even the best exercises to strengthen nor grow them as a muscle group. They are proven to damage your body and to carry on doing them is to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Core is about stability, anti-flexion, to rotate through the hips activating the transverse abdominus and the obliques but anti-rotation of the spine. The rectus abdominus would be like a hamstring if it were meant to crunch.

There is no reason to perform any exercise on your back, we are bipeds and functionally all exercises should reflect our bipedal nature. And aviduser as you are a cyclist you should be welll aware of lower back problems of cyclists and poor core strength, but carry on believing that crunches are good, all the sports scientists, all the strength and conditioning coaches, all the top bodybuilders, all the physiotherapists and oesteopaths will beg to differ and based on the evidence that I have read about I agree. Supine crunches are stupid and damaging and serve no purpose as to what the muscles evolutionary design is intended for and that is anti-flexion you are better off doing extending exercises not contractions.

This

Ever heard of a 'roid gut?

Crunches were developed by body builders during the steroid era because their guts were getting too big from exercises that actually develop the abs. They started doing crunches because, though they did a little bit of work to keep them toned, crunches did little to actually develop strength and size.

If you want to strengthen your mid section properly, do full sit-ups, or leg raises. Crunches won't do you any good.

No, don't do full sit ups or leg raises either - still same destruction of the spine, still leads to thoracic kyphosis and hip flexor issues, not to mention issues with the pelvis, ruptured discs. In fact full sit-ups are worse.