What Strengthens the Core?

                                             

What Strengthens the Core?

You’ve seen them; Balance boards, wobble boards, Bosu balls, physioballs, and all the other bizarre contraptions created to save our pathetically weak cores.  One of the latest “trinkets” costs just under $200 and it appears to be nothing more than a set straps for doing pushups suspended in mid air.  Under the tutelage of a good trainer, these toys and some kettle bells become a spectacle that keep people confused and spending money.  Fortunately, there is another way.  

A recent study by Behm, Drinkwater, Wilardson, & Cowley (2010) states, “Whether instability resistance training is as, more, or less effective than traditional ground-based resistance training is not fully resolved.”

This is not a surprise for strength athletes.  We thrive on a steady diet of traditional ground-based resistance training.

 

Some of our core training includes, but is not limited to, things like “sled pulls” (dragging around a weighted sled) and “tire flips” (flipping over tractor tires that weigh hundreds of pounds).  

 

 http://train.elitefts.com/exercise-index/tire-flip-2/                            http://train.elitefts.com/exercise-index/sled/prowler-forward-drag/

And two of our competitive lifts promote a powerful core. 

The squat and deadlift is a core-building combo that has helped to create some of the most powerful humans on the planet.

          

                                         

These are very basic, functional exercises can be mastered by anyone with a little training.  And once you’ve mastered it, you’ll never need a special TV offer or an expensive trainer again.

Please keep in mind that I believe instability resistance training has practical applications.  For example, my associates in physical therapy explained that they’ve used these tools in rehabilitation of injuries with great success for ages.  The context in which I disagree with many trainers is that I don’t believe that there is enough scientific data to support that these instability devices are as good as traditional ground-based resistance training.  What I find even more distressing is that we seem to have relegated the basic barbell movements of our past for the promise of what we want in half the time with half the sweat.  This smacks of the magic pill syndrome or more commonly known as the sickness of instant gratification.

It should also be noted that in the past, Americans commonly used medicine ball exercises, gymnastics training, and free weights for core strength without ever stepping foot on a wobble board.  We also learned basic movements that allowed us to more easily display functional strength. This was due, in large part, to the active role the core played in the most common exercises of that time.  With the advent of weight machines came the fixed ranges of motion and isolation that all but obliterated the indirect benefit of our previously accepted notions of training. 

One of the conclusions reached by Behm et al. (2010) was, “For athletes and nonathletes at all levels, ground-based free-weight lifts should form the foundation of exercises to train the core musculature. Such closed chain lifts are characterized by moderate levels of instability that allow for the simultaneous development of upper and lower extremity strength, thereby addressing all links in the kinetic chain.”  

It is important to supplement this quote by noting that a trained athlete will need greater stimulus to gain equitable benefit from the exercises, but this is simply a product of the principle of diminishing returns.  And although nonathletes are also better off with the free-weight lifts as a foundation, there may be slightly different reasons. 

Most fitness professionals understand that an untrained person will gain from just about any prescription of exercise.  You are going to get results as long as you exercise, eat, and sleep.  Because of this little quirk, it is difficult to get hard data to support the suggestion that specific exercises really do as much good as some claim.  The point is that unless you are injured, the free weight exercises should be the meat and potatoes of a beginner’s exercise regime because it does work your core more than the other choices.  

In closing, we've examined evidence that shows ground-based traditional resistance exercises (i.e. dragging, lifting, tire flipping, etc.,) trump instability exercises (Bosu, wobble boards, and such) unless you are rehabilitating an injury.  And learning the traditional exercises may require a trainer, but trainers and the latest toys would become obsolete to you in no time. 

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