Dangerously Fit

I’ll let you in on a little secret… I don’t like to do sit-ups. I do them, and I have my athletes do them, because they are a good exercise, but I don’t enjoy them. I have a hard time finding an application in my day to day life where the movement behind a sit-up translates directly to my day to day activities. Plus, I just plain find sit-ups to be boring.

Considering that the words “core training” are a staple in fitness magazines and gadget informercial sales pitches, you may be wondering what kinds of “core” exercises I enjoy doing, and suggest others do as well. Obviously, since so many people are talking about training the core, it must be important, right?

Lets first start off by discussing what the core actually is. The core is not just simply a collection of abdominal muscles that one must crunch incessantly in order to strengthen. Nor is the core a group of microscopic fairy tale muscles that magically activate just because you happen to own a stability ball. The core can be considered as being made up of numerous muscles, including the rectus abdominus (that ever elusive 6 pack), the transverse abdominus, the internal and external obliques, the quadratus lumborum, the multifidus (which runs the length of the spine), and even the glutes. Yes, your butt is part of your core. There has to be some spiritual significance to that, or something.

Anyway, back to the core. What is the role of these “core muscles”. To some degree they are involved in initiating movement, such as is the case with the glutes. But, for the most part, the core keeps your guts in place, and stabilizes your spine and pelvis as you perform various tasks. You’ll have to excuse the comment about the guts. I saw a zombie movie last night, and have guts on the brain. But for a moment, consider that zombies do a terrible job at both keeping their guts in place, as well as keeping an erect, neutral spine and stable pelvis, and you may rightly think that without proper training of the core, one could become a zombie. That’s food for thought…

I digress. Considering the role of the core in stabilizing, what are some good exercises for developing those muscles? Here are some suggestions.

Any exercise that involves holding a weight above the head while standing or being otherwise on your feet can place tremendous demands on the core muscles to contract and create a rigid center through which force can be transmitted from one end of the body to the other. Good examples are the shoulder press, overhead squat, and overhead lunge. Use anything from single weight plates, to barbells, to dumbells, to medicine balls to provide the resistance, JUST GO HEAVY and pay attention to how you need to actively contract various muscles in your mid section to keep from getting “zombie posture”.

Other exercises are the deadlift, and the squat, which both require the back to be solidly locked in position before initiating the movement. Again, going heavy with dumbbells and barbells held in various positions is key. Again, go heavy here.

Unilateral exercises are good for building core strength as well, and have functional crossover into our activities of daily living. Ever have the bag boy at the supermarket unevenly load your bags? Had to walk all the way up the driveway with one bag pulling you off to the side? This is unilateral training. By training with one side of the body under a load and not the other, we build the strength needed to keep our body in a natural, healthy posture and prepare ourselves for activites which require this kind of work, such as carrying a heavy tool box. Some unilateral exercises I highly recommend are the 1 arm dumbbell presses, 1 armed farmer’s carries, 1 armed push ups, kettlebell snatches, and kettlebell clean and press. In fact, there are so many unilateral kettlebell exercises, and this is one reason why they are so great. I highly recommend kettlebell training.

Last, but not least, there are a lot of bodyweight exercises you can do to train the core to stabilize. Planks, side planks and push-ups are great examples of this. There are plenty of basic to advanced yoga and gymnastic exercises that also challenge the body to stabilize at the core. From sarvangasana (shoulder stand) to handstands and levers, there is no shortage of ways to challenge your core without the need for any fancy gadget, obscene vibrating belt, electrodes, robots, or other such nonsense.

There you have it. an arsenal of exercises to keep you from looking like a zombie. Am I saying don’t do your sit-ups? Absolutely not. In fact, I have a few ab exercises that I’d like to share in a future article. However, there is so much more to training the midsection, and I hope you get some great ideas from what you’ve just read.

Live dangerously, but stabilize intelligently! Now go lift something heavy over your head, just don’t drop it.