What is your core made up of?
Often times when we talk about our core or doing core exercises we solely think of our abdominal muscles (6 pack abs). Your core goes beyond your abdominal muscles. Your core muscles include all the muscles within your torso some of the major ones include your abdominals, obliques, erector spinae, and pelvic floor muscles.
Function of your core
Your core muscles help to stabilize your body and spine throughout different movements. Strengthening your core muscles will help improve posture and stability and can help to reduce low back pain.
Have you ever seen one of those flimsy air dancers outside?
That is what I imagine the human body without core muscles.
Core and weight loss
Often times you hear of people saying they want a flat stomach and protruding abs so they are going to work their core everyday to lose weight. They might even have been influenced my those mis-leading infomercials promising to spot reduce stomach fat.
Although conditioning your abs has it’s place the only way you are going to lose weight is by burning more calories than you are consuming. You can learn more about that by reading the best way to lose weight.
Core & Athletes
A strong core is paramount for athletes as it helps them better control their movements and transfer force.
For example think of a golfer, tennis player or any athlete that needs to twist or throw in their sport. They need to have strong oblique muscles which will help stabilize the body during the twisting motion and transfer force throughout the full range of motion.
Another example would be a soccer player planting one leg while shooting the ball with the other. Your core muscles will fire in order to allow the athlete to stay stable and transfer force as they are kicking the ball.
The list goes on but at the end of the day if you don’t have a strong core, you will not be as stable throughout movements and it will negatively impact your performance.
Check out these stability exercises below:
