The Tao of Core

Well I had to go and type my big hands off and now try to sound really smart and discuss 'core' training. Well here it goes...

Core Training is basically a catch-all term to describe exercising an area of your body that reside roughly between your diaphram in your torso and the diaphram in your sphincter. It involves a whole spectrum of neuro-muscular connections (brain & muscle working together) in order to achieve a greater rate of overall strength. Can you get stronger? Yes. Is it the best workout for you? Let me put it this way, in really plan terms...any deconditioned person is going to get benefit from progressive resistance activity (i.e. lifting weights), until a point of diminishing returns. Core Training has tremendous benefits but like all good things must be used in moderation.

Core Training is considered 'Modern Fitness' as much as using nothing but barbells and dumbbells is called, 'Old School.' Modern fitness is a term that defines a current movement to bring physical therapy techniques into the health club environment, and that's a good thing really. Ten years ago, no self respecting health club had a dozen big plastic balls floating around and now people won't join a gym without them available.

The problem develops however when people new to exercise are immediately provided a detailed core training program and the exercises are so elaborate that they can only do them when the trainer is there to set everything up and coax them through the movements. Trainers use foreign jargon and strange acronyms that even other trainers can't decipher sometimes. So the downfall of modern fitness is the absolute reliance on a trainer if the person can't catch on to the movements. As much as I appreciate the use of a good personal trainer, I think it is detestable for them to create programs for clients who then can't do them on their own. What's the benefit of core training if no one remembers what to do and how to do it?

Core Training is also a marketing concept. The actual movements of core training involve activating a muscle system called the Transverse Abdominus or in layman's terms TVA (which is what I will call it from now on). The TVA is a band of muscles that stretches completely around your waist and attaches to both sides of your spine. It is buried deep within your body and no matter how thin or how low your body fat is, you will never see it. Think of it as an internal weight belt, much like you see people in the gym use.

By activating the TVA, which I will describe in a moment, your are tightening all the internal muscles around your torso which in effect allows your body to undertake more stressful environments. Now you DO NOT activate your TVA by simply tightening your abs like your about to take a punch to the gut. Rather think of it this way, imagine a fish hook is attached to the back of your belly button, inside you. The line is attached to your spine and you reel in your belly button towards your spine, that's TVA activation.

A little exercise now. Sit up straight in your chair everyone. Good. Now flex your stomach as hard as you can, as if you were going to get punched really hard. Hold it, 1.......2.......3.......4, relax. Did you feel your throat get tight? Did you hold your breath? If you did breath it was labored, huh? Does it feel like you just did ten full sit ups? Go ahead try it again. Well if you felt all that you successfully contracted your abs but not your TVA.

Now sit up straight again. And draw in that belly button towards your spine. Don't hold your breath, breathe naturally. As you breathe and draw in your navel, you'll feel your stomach tighten but not in a 'getting punched' way, but a 'solid muscle' way. Now slowly and out loud count to ten while your breathing. If you can make it past five, still feeling that solid muscle feeling and your not out of breath, then you did it, good job.

Here is an interesting trick to show your progress. Practice TVA activation a few times standing up and counting to ten to make sure you have it down, then go find someone you trust. Walk up to them, stand normally with your feet shoulder width apart and ask them to square up to you and give you a good shove using both hands at shoulder level, not enough to knock you down but enough that a shove will force you to lose balance and take a step backwards to stay upright. Just ask, no one wants to give you the shove you deserve. You'll move because your body is unbalanced. Now before he/she thinks your absolutely nuts, regain your stance, square up but now tighten your TVA. Ask the person to shove you again and you should notice that you didn't lose balance. Oh your upper body may have moved from the impact but your feet should have stayed in place. That's using your TVA.

TVA exercises are based on movements that progress or regress from stable to unstable environments. An example of these environments? Slip off both shoes, come on its an experiment...Stand up, right now, no you don't look foolish, no one knows what your doing. Just stand there for a second, not too difficult you could do that all day long, huh. Now, what's your dominate leg? I want you to lift that foot off the ground, just far just enough to not throw your hips off balance. Notice how your weaker foot and ankle are having to work really hard to keep you upright. That's an unstable environment.

So a TVA exercise is one that you would do in a stable environment but progressively make it more unstable. Instead of a flat, bolted down bench press with a long heavy and weighted bar in both hands, move to a Swiss ball and dumbbells. Using the TVA to control your balance. If its initially too hard then regress by putting your feet against a wall giving you more balance/more stability.

My favorite is The Bridge. Lay face down on the ground. Then lift up your body so only your toes and your forearms are supporting your body weight. Try to form a straight line with your torso and activate TVA. Hold for 15, 30, 60 seconds. A progression is lifting one arm or leg or one of both at the same time.

Marketing people want you to believe that you have to have all these devices to do 'core' training. The only must have, if you must have, is a Swiss ball. A large plastic, inflated ball that you sit on, lay on, press on to create an unstable environment for exercises. I actually do think every home should have one. I know people who use it for desk chairs because the motion of the ball will keep the back muscles from tightening up and you can burn an estimated 300 calories a day more than sitting in a regular chair. Swiss balls are based on height and come in centimeters, get a fitting, its important that its not to big or small. A dyna-disc is a great thing to use. Essentially a flat plastic, round disc of air about the size and shape of a medium, deep crust pizza dish that you can sit on or stand on to create an unstable environment for your feet, especially in say a squat exercise. A dyna-band is a colored piece of rubber tubing used to strengthen muscle and connective tissue, the colors denote how strong the band is. I do not believe that a BOSU ball is the end all, be all of core exercises, like marketing people will tell you. A BOSU ball is basically a Swiss ball cut in half and the flat side is a hard surface. There is a lot you can do with it but its no better than more ready equipment and its more expensive and has limitations. THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT YOU REALLY DON'T NEED ANYTHING TO TRAIN YOUR TVA OTHER THAN EDUCATION, YOUR OWN BODY WEIGHT AND AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF PATIENCE BECAUSE YOU WILL GET FRUSTRATED AT NOT BEING ABLE TO DO SOMETHING SO PATHETICALLY EASY.

TVA training or core activation training or whatever else you call it, is primarily a means of creating more strength in your body by using your entire body to accomplish the movement. When utilizing a TVA activated posture in an unstable movement it is entirely possible to reach total body failure before you even feel tension in the area you think your working. See if your TVA is not strong, then your entire body is working from a compartmentalized position. When you were pushed by the co-worker (or soon to be pushed) you fell backwards the first time because your upper body took the brunt of the impact and your feet moved to compensate for loss of balance. The second time, with TVA activation, your legs, your back, your whole body absorbed the push and you didn't lose balance. Starting to make sense now?

Now in the case of advanced athletes, once the basics of TVA are mastered they move into Functional Training. This type of training takes TVA movements and combines them or specializes them to the person. Plyometrics, for example, is one such technique that uses explosive movements sometimes under tension to perform a sport specific function, mostly using gravity but also belts or cables. You can use plyometrics to increase your vertical leap by jumping as high as you can as many times as possible. Then to get higher you attach a rubber strap to a belt around your waist so you can't jump as high, now jump as high.

Core Training is as much a marketing tool as a smart approach to overall fitness and it is very much still in its infancy stages. As society gets more deconditioned and doctors become more proactive to preventing injury we will continue to see a cross over of physical therapy exercises, eastern philosophy (which I didn't touch on but is co-dependent to core training), and sport specific conditioning to offer greater benefits to overall physical fitness.