I didn’t realize how important it was to purchase the right abdominal equipment until we actually purchased one - an ab-roller style piece of exercise equipment that was a simple C-shaped crunch machine that helped you stay in form when doing ab crunches, at a garage sale.

We had already purchased a “cheapo” ab roller type of machine at Target for about $30, and thought that this model, which looked a lot nicer and more intricate than the ab roller we’d purchased at Target (and mind you, cost only $1 at the garage sale), would work a lot better and be a more solid piece of home exercise equipment for completing abdominal crunches correctly and without lower back strain or pain.

However, boy were we wrong. This ab cruncher model did look a lot nicer and sturdier, but there was a reason the folks who sold it at the garage sale were getting rid of it. Doing your crunches on the thing actually made you lower and upper back kill you the next day. While it did feel like you were working your abs a little harder, the C shaped design had some kind of flaw in it where you lower back was not protected at all, and in fact it actually made you wrench you back a little every time you came into the crunch position.

I knew it wasn’t only me either, my boyfriend also said the next day his back was incredibly sore. So, for now, we’re sticking with our lower end Target ab roller, and may be on the look out for an even more back-safe model down the road. I do know that a lot of not getting a sore back from doing ab work is in your form and protecting your back by using your abdominal muscles instead of your back, which is a common mistake a lot of people make when doing ab work, but I consider my ab form pretty good, and I’ve been doing them for years, so I don’t think the form was my problem, I really think it was the machine.

I wish I could remember the brand name of the machine, I want to say it might have been Reebok, but can’t say for sure - it was a purple color though and did look to be an old model.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 7:37 am and is filed under Fitness Equipment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.