What is the CORE ???

If you’ve skimmed the pages of any fitness magazine you’ve probably heard the phrase “core strength”.  For many, this phrase conjures up images of the columns that hold up a bridge or the intense energy that fuels our sun. 

In a way, that is not that far from our meaning.  Core strength is simply the middle of your body.  It is the mass to which your legs, arms, and head are attached.  And it is the limiting factor in one’s ability to provide stability and transfer power from the legs to the upper extremities.  In other words, without core strength you cannot effectively display functional strength of any other body part.  

This concept can be difficult for some to fully appreciate until taken to extremes.  I like to use the example of the bionic man.  There was a show way back when called “The Six Million Dollar Man”.  It starred Lee Majors and was a sci-fi sort of show.  Lee Majors played Steve Austin; an astronaut who was maimed in a botched shuttle landing and was revived / rebuilt by a secret government agency.  A few of his limbs were robotic and super strong. So Steve could flip a pickup truck with his bionic arm.  He could bend steal and lift really heavy stuff in the show.  Unfortunately, it could never work that way due to basic physics. 

If someone really had an unusually strong robotic arm attached to an average strength human frame and tried to flip a truck, their arm would most likely be ripped from their body by the force being generated. Your core (and connective tissue for that matter) has to be able to support the forces generated by your arms or legs for you to lift heavy objects. It’s like gravity folks. I don’t make the rules … I just feel its inescapable pull when I lift something.

So if we can generally accept that for any given limb to exhibit strength, the core from which the limb is attached must be able to stabilize it: we can agree why the core must be made or kept strong. Now we can move on to how to make the core strong.