Whatever Your Level...Train Your CoreFor balance & Stability
- You can not go to a gym or read a fitness magazine or talk to a trainer without hearing something about your core. What exactly is your core and why is it so important to train these muscles? Contrary to what a lot of people believe the core muscles are a lot more than just your abdominal muscles. While from the viewpoint of an anatomist the core muscles include any muscles from the hip to the neck, the core muscles from a trainers viewpoint extend from the hips to below the arms and do not include shoulder and neck muscles. The muscles in your core allow you to stand upright, rotate your body and basically do the whole balancing and walking thing. For a little anatomy brush up the most important muscles that make up your core are:
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• Hip flexors
• Erector Spinae (running from the neck to lower back)
• Multifidus (under the Erector Spinae)
• Rectus Abdominus (the six-pack muscles)
• External Obliques (side of the waist and the vertical line muscle)
• Internal Obliques (under external obliques)
• Transverse Abdominus (under the obliques and around the spine)
Can Significantly Reduce Back Pain
- The development and proper training of these muscles is much more important than having a great six-pack to show off at the beach in the summer, but that’s nice too. The most important thing is that balanced training of these muscles can give you a significant reduction in back pain. Anyone that suffers from back pain knows how limiting it can be. Bending over to pick up your child, reaching across the table for a salt shaker or even looking over your shoulder when parking your car can send pain shooting up your back. Proper training can give you significant relief from pain. Making sure that both the muscles along the spine and the abs are trained to have equal strength gives relief because then one group of muscles isn’t overworking because another is literally not pulling its weight. In the space of just three or four weeks you can have less pain.
Improve Your Athletic Performance
Improving the strength of the entire group of muscles also enhances athletic performance, especially with sports where you are constantly using rotational movements. If you want more speed in your tennis serve or more length in your golf drive add some core workouts three times a week. Ask Tiger, he does Pilates, and one or two weekend duffers might be willing to follow the lead of a man with his success.
Finally, your stability, balance and posture will all improve with regular core training. Do you need to climb a ladder around the house, climb a tree to rescue a kitten and save the day or maybe improve your snowboarding skills? Core training will help you with all of these. Your posture will without effort improve, and you will not have to be told to, “stand up straight!” And good posture alone will make you look five pounds lighter, and who doesn’t like looking taller, skinnier and spunkier?!?