Dear Julie,

You wrote an interesting letter on your beautiful website (www.juliewiebept.com) to the coach of your girl’s gymnastic program.  You wished to

share with you and your staff how a decade or so of research is transforming our understanding of how we create a strong sturdy center that anchors all of our movements

As a father of two young girls (5 and 3) I really appreciated your views on healthy sports participation, concerns about body issues and the importance of fun in physical activity.  Like you I am also a physiotherapist with a special interest in spine function. I am also a chiropractor, was a spine biomechanics researcher, I completed a MSc in Spine Biomechanics with one of the authors of the references you cited (Stu McGill), I have published a few papers on trunk muscle function (here, here and here) during a variety tasks and was initially very interested in doing research on the lowly and often derided abdominal crunch (here and here).   I love talking about spine stability and how much of this actually old research (I don’t think it’s emerging, most has been around since the 90s) is applied to clinic or sport in ways that the research does not actually support.  I am also a former recreational gymastics coach and regularly “threw back tucks” after two beers at parties well into my twenties. (more…)