What Is A Core?

What Is A Core?
by Mike Romatowski

Many people think that the term “core” refers to the abdominal muscles, or perhaps to the abdominals plus the lower back. I have a better description: Your core is everything but your arms and legs.

Essentially the core is the trunk of the body, including the groin muscles, the hip muscles, the abdominal muscles, the lower back muscles, and the butt muscles. Yep, it’s everything but your arms and legs!

An interesting fact:

There is only one muscle that attaches each leg to the spine. The psoas, or “hip flexor”, runs from the thigh bone through the pelvic area and on to the lower back. Likewise, there is only one muscle that attaches each arm to the spine. The latissimus dorsi, or “lat,” runs from the lower back up to the upper arm bone.

How Do I Get the Core To Do Its Job?

This is the $64,000 question within the fitness and physical therapy industries. There are several ways that trainers and therapists attempt to teach core activation:

a. draw the navel inward toward the spine
b. tighten the pelvic floor (muscles near the crotch)
c. pretend you are urinating and tighten the muscles that cut off the flow
d. pretend you are balancing on a canoe and pay attention to which muscles you are activating for balance

Personally, I prefer the method espoused by Gray Cook, a physical therapist and educator from Danville, VA. He teaches his patients to create a “tall spine.”

To get a feel for this, kneel on the ground and pretend you are trying to lengthen your spine upward so that the top of your head feels as though it is pressing toward the ceiling.

Sit-Ups and Crunches for the Core?

The thought that sit-ups and crunches will strengthen the core is an example of a “1980’s” school of thought. Think about it: The core is everything but the arms and legs. The core encompasses a complex network of muscles crisscrossing the pelvic area and trunk. It is best exercised with a variety of movements that incorporate bending, twisting, reaching, and turning.

Don’t think about strengthening your core. Think about activating it and using it to channel movement. When you activate it you will feel like you are lengthening your spine (making it “tall”). When you use it you will move dynamically and transfer force through it from the legs to the arms and from the arms to the legs.

An Exercise to Illustrate the Point

Stand with your feet close together and place a soccer ball between your knees. Exert inward pressure on the ball with your knees and inner thighs. Now lengthen your spine and make it feel “tall” by feeling like the top of your head is pressing toward the ceiling.

Now stretch your arms up like you’re signaling “Touchdown!” Now rotate your body side to side, left and right.

What you just did is activate your core from the bottom up by engaging the groin and inner thigh muscles to put pressure on the ball, and by creating a tall spine. Then you engaged abdominal and torso muscles by rotating your trunk.

Congratulations! You just activated your core and used it to create movement in three dimensions! You just moved the way a real human being is designed to move!

Mike Romatowski, creator of "18 Magic Moves for Golf Conditioning", owns Five-Star Fitness, a golf conditioning and post-rehab facility in Owings Mills, Maryland. Mike works with amateur and collegiate golfers, including 2005 U.S. Open participant Marlowe Boukis and AJGA (Chicago) winner Michelle Grilli.

Comments

[michael jones]

Very good post and so comprehensible explanations! My passion is strenght training and i am sure that the information you gave me here will be very useful to me. Thank you!