What Are The Benefits Of Core Strengthening Exercises?

July 1, 2009— -- Question: What are the benefits of core strengthening exercises?

Answer: Core strengthening exercises are a very popular form of training right now. Core stability has been defined by a lot of different people to be a lot of different things. It's very much in the fad of an exercise. However, core stability in research? We really don't know what it does exactly. We understand that the core transfers energy from the lower body to the upper body. The core positions the torso over the lower body to help prevent injuries, potentially.

However, we don't really know what that means in training. That said, we still continue to train the core as if it was an important part of the athletic chain. So when we're training the core, it's important that we understand its role in athleticism and its role in training and not necessarily segregate it out from all the other training as its own training variable. What I mean by that is: Training the core can be done in a variety of ways.

I think when you're lifting free weights you are training the core significantly especially in the lumbar spine and the erectors of the spine. Doing different exercises such as catching a ball in a lunge might be a good core stability exercise just positioning the torso over the lower body. So there are a lot of different forms of core stability training that don't necessarily take the form of the traditional crunches, planks, holds -- those kinds of things that can be used in training athletes to improve their core stability.