Core Part 1/2 - Strength

What does a student, a full time employee and a hard core gamer all have in common? A bad back. Its probably the most common chronic pain around. Add an athletic career to that and there is no possible way you won't complain every now and then. Probably, you'll just complain every now--that is to say, all the time.

How do you fix this? Better posture. How do you get that? Core strength and flexibility. But how you attain those things is the real question.

Gym teachers of the world: LISTEN UP. Here is how to strengthen your core. In my opinion, it is the only acceptable way to do it safely and realistically.

First of all let me be very clear:  CORE DOES NOT MEAN SIX PACK. It doesn't even mean abs.

Starting from the bottom up, the word core should really include: glutes, especially the medial and minor ones, all four (thats right, FOUR) levels of abdominals, all of the spine extendor muscles, your neck muscles and the stabilizers of your scapula (shoulder blade).

Why do I feel this way you ask? Well anything your limbs do is stabilized by the things at either end. If the body end is weaker than the business end, you're going to cripple yourself.

In a practical sense what this means for you is that to exercise your core effectively, you should be doing so across as many joints as possible. I'll end with a few good exercises.

I have another point to make here and it is pretty simple. There are only a few real world applications of the crunch or sit up. The one that comes to mind is cross country skiing and even that is half squat these days**.

So to summarize what I've said so far:

1. Core exercises should involve as many joints as possible because the term core refers to a large number of muscle groups working together.

2. There is no requirement to move your spine during core exercises. In fact, anybody who studies the effects of spine movements during core exercise will tell you that they are the devil.

So what should you do? Well there are tonnes of possibilities, but the general rule is that you want your core to be active, but your spine to be static. Here are a few examples

Any kind of plank. Try using an exercise ball or lifting an arm or a leg.
Any kind of squat, dead lift, clean lift or kettle bell lift.
Any kind of push-up or chin-up. My personal favourite is a chin-up with my legs parallel to the ground. You can also go at 45 degrees and work your way up.
Any kind of row, ideally, standing, pulling a cable.
Lots of dumbbell exercises done standing or one sided are good as well (i.e. overhead press using only one arm at a time).
There are many, many, many, many more, but this is a great place to get started from.

Next time, I'll discuss the importance of flexibility on keeping good posture and a pain free back. It'll probably be a fairly short post.

**This is kind of like my beef with bicep curls. They're not that useful if unless you shoot pool or row. Also, curls for the girls.