Core training is most often referred to as exercises that work your rectus abdominis.  Sometimes the concept of core training will go as far as including the external and internal obliques and the lumbar erectors, but it rarely goes past that stage.  The term “core” in itself is very loosely used to describe either abs training or stability training, or sometimes both.  But the reality is that your core can include every muscle that runs across your hips, spine (including the cervical spine) and shoulders.

And this is only the back view…

So we definitely need to broaden our horizons when we think about core training and realize it’s much more than just the muscles around our belly.  Here are some of the most overlooked aspects of core training:

• Cervical spine alignment (packing the neck)
• Inner core activation (pelvic floor, diaphragm, transverse abdominis and multifidus)
• Breathing patterns

These are 3 things that go hand in hand with each other, as well as with traditional core training and in my opinion they’re probably the 3 most overlooked aspects of core training among athletes and regular gym-goers.

The trend since Stuart McGill’s work came out is to use neutral spine whenever we train the core and lift weights.  The goal is to reinforce this pattern as much as possible.  But we often forget that the neck is part of the spine and that should also be trained to be neutral.  There is a much deeper core activation when the neck is packed in a neutral position and it provides for greater stability.  The cervical spine often gets into hyperextension when training, especially with posterior chain exercises.  The tendency is to keep the eyes up while the angle of the spine gets closer to parallel.

Notice how hyperextended the cervical spine is.

This position puts a lot of strain on the inter-vertebral discs of the cervical spine on top of having sub-optimal spine stability all the way down to the lumbar spine (each segment of the spine interacts with each other).  Keeping the neck in a neutral/packed position will facilitate a proper breathing pattern (Try and take a deep breath- without thinking about it- first, in a relaxed position with your neck not in a neutral position, and then try it again in a packed neck position.  Notice how the breath with the packed neck position is much more of a belly breath, compared to more of a chest breath without your neck packed).  And that in turn will facilitate activation of the inner core muscles.

Why is this the first image that pops up when I google “packed neck position”??
…but I have to say that his form is pretty impressive

The bottom line is that everything in your core is interrelated together and when everything is indeed coordinated, you gain amazing stability that you wouldn’t have otherwise.   That’s why it’s so important to train your inner core, your breathing patterns and your packed neck position.  From an injury prevention and a strength gain standpoint it can make all the difference.

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Pelvic control is an important thing to have at the hips level.  Anterior pelvic tilt is a common problem in the athletic population.  With too much anterior tilt, also comes increased lordosis.

Neutral pelvis on the left. Anteriorly tilted pelvis on the right.

Both of these postural problems can lead to a number of injuries including back pain, hamstring pulls, quad pull, etc.  The traditional approach to reestablishing neutral alignment is to stretch the hip flexors and strengthen the glutes and hamstrings to pull the pelvis posteriorly.

Although this is a good approach, there are other players that can contribute to pelvic control that are often forgotten.  One really important player is the external obliques.  The external obliques’ primary functions are to stabilize the trunk (in combination with the internal obliques, rectus abdominis and spinal erectors) by creating a brace around the spine and to create/prevent rotation at the trunk.  A function of the external obliques that is often forgotten is posterior tilt/control of the pelvis because of its attachment on the illiac crest.  When you’re stuck in anterior tilt the external obliques usually have poor control on the pelvis.

With their attachment directly on the pelvis, the external obliques play a big role in preventing anterior tilt.

Because of their role in posterior pelvic tilt, we could call the external obliques the lower abs.  Not that the bodybuilding guys were right in training their upper abs and lower abs separately, but there might be some merit in making the distinction between the rectus abdominis (who felxes the spine and depresses the ribs) and the external obliques (who posteriorly tilt the pelvis as we’ve just mentioned) in some cases.

Stay tuned for part 2!  I’ll go over exercises you can do to help improve pelvic control using the external obliques.

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I’ve written a lot about core training and different core exercises in the past.  But one thing that’s really important to consider with core exercises is that you just can’t use anyone randomly with any athlete or client.  It is fair to say that we should use progressions with our core exercises, at least with beginners; start them with more simple and basic exercises and progress them to more challenging variations.  You should do that with all your core exercises from the different groups: anti-flexion, anti-extension, anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion and inner core exercises.  Today, I want to focus on anti-extension, or the anterior core group.

- The first most basic progression for most would be, with no big suprise, the front plank.

The front plank is a basic bodyweight exercise that requires to maintain a straight line throughout your body and keep a neutral spine position.  This is also the goal of most other progressions, but the front plank plank does that without additional challenges.

- The second progression would be the stability ball front plank.  Once someone has mastered the front plank and can hold it for over a minute, you can progress them to the stability ball version.  The biggest difference with the stability ball front plank is that the surface on which you place your elbows is unstable, which in turn will require a greater activation from your core muscles to maintain the proper position.

- The third one is a similar variation from the stability ball front plank.  Once that position is mastered, you can incorporate mini-rollouts with the same position on the ball to make it more challenging.  Once again the goal is to maintain a neutral spine and keeping the belly tight even if we added movement.

- The slideboard bodysaw would be the next progression following the stability ball minirollouts.

The effect is pretty much the same because your points of contact on the ground further away from each other (elbows and feet), but this time since your moving your whole body away it makes the slideboard bodysaw much more difficult.

- The last one, but not the least, is the ab wheel rollout.  This implement has been around forever, but I fell like it is not appreciated enough.  When done correctly the ab wheel rollout is one of the most difficult anterior core exercise of all.  You need to be really strong in order to maintain a neutral spine throughout a full range of motion.  And to push things a little further, when you’ve mastered the ab wheel rollout, you can do it band-resisted:

There are many other variations of anti-extension core exercises we use with our athletes at Endeavor, but hopefully this gave you an idea of how progress anterior core exercises.

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At the risk of getting some hate mail for this blog post, I will call out one of the most popular exercise in athletes and fitness enthousiasts alike; the crunch.  Whether they are done on the ground, on a stability ball, on a Bosu ball, with your legs straight, with your legs bent or juggling with dumbbells I don’t care; crunches are probably the most useless exercise to train your core (or abs, or midsection, whatever you want to call it).

Why? I am going to answer that question with another question: why are we doing crunches anyway? It’s probably for one of two reasons.  The first one is because it is believed by many that the main function of your abs (read: rectus abdominis) is to flex your spine, so it would seem normal to train abs by doing flexions.  The other reason is because crunches have been around forever, everyone has been doing them, so we just don’t think about why we do it.

The truth is a that flexion at the spine is not the main function of your rectus abdominis.  Spinal flexion is actually one of the mechanisms that lead to low back injuries along with hyperextension and rotation.  And Dr.Stuart McGill who is one of the lead researcher in the world in low back pain and injuries has actually described that in great details in his books.  So why would you want to try to recreate an injury mechanism in your training? 

The true role of the rectus abdominis is to prevent extension at the lumbar spine; in other words, its primary function is stability at the lower back.  The rectus abdominis also works with the obliques (internal and external) as well as with the spinal erectors and inner core muscles to create a brace around the spine to prevent excessive movements. 

That’s right, all these muscles work together to STABILIZE around the lower back.  So why the hell would you want to find ways to create more motion at this joint that needs stability by using all sorts of flexion and rotation exercises? That just doesn’t make sense to me.

One more thing is that by training the rectus abdominis with repeated flexion doing crunches, you’re actually shortening that muscle.  Keeping in mind that the rectus abdominis attaches at the ribs, what’s going to happen if this muscle keeps shortening and pulls the ribs down?

You’re gonna end up with a pretty bad kyphosis (rounded over upper back) and that’s gonna lead you to a whole lot of other problems.

The true role of the core muscles is to stabilize; prevent flexion, prevent extension, prevent side bend and prevent rotation to avoid excessive motion.  So wouldn’t it make sense to train these muscles that exact same way? There are tons of excellent exercises that are gonna enhance stability of the trunk.  If you don’t know where to start, there is a revolutionary exercise that we just discovered and nobody ever heard of, that is gonna do wonders to improve stability….it’s called a plank!

But what about rotation? You need rotational power when you sports, right? I totally agree with that, but rotation should be trained through the hips while the trunk muscles remain stable.  Most of your rotational power is going to come from your hips anyway.

I think it’s about time we drop the crunches for good.  Just because they have been around forever and it seems like everyone does them means they are good for you, nor you should keep doing them.