Apr 1, 2026 · 1 hr 44 min · 12 segments
In this episode, I break down everything you need to know to build a strong core and better-looking abs — and explain why most people are training them wrong. I start by clarifying the difference…
Andy GalpinHost
If you're anything like me, you've probably gone through a phase of your life where you've done all of the sit-ups and crunches you could possibly do.
Why is it people take their abdominals and their core and train them with the endless crunches and sit-ups with the planks? Now, the reason most people train their abs this way actually comes from a good place.
If you go back to the 1960s and 70s, these legendary figures in fitness and strength and conditioning like Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger were big proponents of training a lot of repetitions.
In fact, this is exactly how Arnold outlined it in his legendary encyclopedia training book.
You roll into the 1980s and you have now the explosion of Pilates and Jane Fonda and literally the eight minute ab workouts.
And while that's reasonably OK to think, it's not as precise and specific as it can be.
You had then the evolution in the 1990s and early 2000s with people like John and McGill who started taking the abs more from the perspective of low back pain.
and started saying, hey, your core is important to your pain, and so we should actually train it with the specific goal of minimizing low back injury or pain.
We didn't really have discussions in the 70s, 80s, 90s about why your back hurts, why your hips hurt, it's because your core is weak.
And so when we started to unravel this stuff scientifically and from the field, people had to start saying, okay, well, you may be trained like this if you want your abs to look great, but maybe you train like that if you just want your back to not hurt as much.
If you're anything like me, you've probably gone through a phase of your life where you've done all of the sit-ups and crunches you could possibly do.
Why is it people take their abdominals and their core and train them with the endless crunches and sit-ups with the planks? Now, the reason most people train their abs this way actually comes from a good place.
If you go back to the 1960s and 70s, these legendary figures in fitness and strength and conditioning like Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger were big proponents of training a lot of repetitions.
In fact, this is exactly how Arnold outlined it in his legendary encyclopedia training book.
You roll into the 1980s and you have now the explosion of Pilates and Jane Fonda and literally the eight minute ab workouts.
And while that's reasonably OK to think, it's not as precise and specific as it can be.
You had then the evolution in the 1990s and early 2000s with people like John and McGill who started taking the abs more from the perspective of low back pain.
and started saying, hey, your core is important to your pain, and so we should actually train it with the specific goal of minimizing low back injury or pain.
We didn't really have discussions in the 70s, 80s, 90s about why your back hurts, why your hips hurt, it's because your core is weak.
And so when we started to unravel this stuff scientifically and from the field, people had to start saying, okay, well, you may be trained like this if you want your abs to look great, but maybe you train like that if you just want your back to not hurt as much.
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