Fitness & Bodybuilding

Why You Need a Strong Core and How To Go About It   by Mike Mullet

Something that has always been a very important part of fitness that only recently has been starting to receive the attention that it deserves is core strength and stability. You can tell it’s finally hitting the main-stream as over the last five years or so there has been a massive increase in the amount of people interested in a weight training routine specifically for increasing the strength and stability of the core muscles.

What does core strength mean though?

Well, let me start by telling you what the muscles of the core are. The core muscles are the muscles of the pelvis and trunk. The job of the core muscles is to stabilize your spine and to help the body move effectively while under stress from various loads. If your trunk muscles are weak then your posture and quality of movement can be greatly affected.

The role of the core muscles are to aid in the transferring of energy from the large muscles in your body to the small muscles in your body. The muscles of the core really come into play when doing sports-type movements. Actually in the last few years there has been a big shift from normal weight training where you lift barbells and dumbbells to more functional training where you try and do exercises that resemble movements in your sport as much as possible.

What does functional training tries to do is take certain movements that occur during a certain sport and then try and mimic those movements as much as possible during training. Studies have shown that training to improve your core strength and stability can reduce the risk of getting injured and also help to improve the amount of power you can drive.

By strengthening your core muscles in the trunk and pelvis you provide yourself with a stable and effective platform for the usage by your arm, shoulders and leg muscles. One popular way to develop the core is to do Pilate exercise.

Some of the more important muscles, or should I say most important muscles of the core are the abdominal muscles that are much deeper and that wrap the spine and provide protection to it. Muscles such as the erector muscles of the lower back, the ab muscles that run along the front and sides of the abdomen and the pelvic floor and hip muscles.

Now if you have a six-pack then I’m sure you think you already have good strength and stability of the core. However that’s not the case as having abs doesn’t mean that you necessarily have good core development. This is because the most important muscles of the core aren’t visible; instead they are underneath the six-pack. These hidden muscles work along with the erector muscles of the spine to help you have good posture and balance throughout your daily life. So, just because you do sit-ups, it doesn’t mean you have a good core.

How do you go about training for core stability and strength?

The major way to train for core strength is to do exercises that mimic certain movements that are key in a specific sport. You should be focusing your time then on exercises that involve a lot of rotational and diagonal movements. You should also work on your strength and balance by doing exercises standing or sitting on different surfaces. These different surfaces should be both balanced and unbalanced. So, surfaces such as wobble boards, balance beams, fit balls and foam rollers are the way to go.

Your training should put a lot of weight on developing a balance between the prime agonist movers and the supporting antagonist muscles. When people play sports many of the movements done aren’t performed just standing. Instead there are many different movements like shifting one weight from one leg to the other and balancing on one leg. You should be doing then exercises that mimic such movements.

The core is not just one muscle; it’s actually made up of many different muscles. The muscles of the core are made up of the many different back, trunk and pelvis muscles. It’s important then that you do many different exercises so you can work all these different muscle groups.

What sort of exercises should you do?

I find that the best way to develop core strength is by doing standard ab exercises like crunches and sit-ups, exercises of exercise balls such as roll outs, sit-ups, leg letc etc. And also doing weight training exercises such as the squat, deadlift and Olympic lifts like the clean and press.

Other exercises that are not needed but can help work out your core even more are Medicine Ball training, doing exercises such has side throw, overhead throw, rugby passing, holding the medicine ball over head and lunge exercises. You can also do exercises that get you balancing on a foam roller, wobble board or balance beam.

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