New exercise tips, techniques and training routines that boost your body’s core strength and stamina

Core stability is an essential determinant of success for all sports people; cyclists, runners or swimmers, football players, rugby players, golfers or rowers. Even those whom are not into sports, every day people will benefit from great core stability. That’s because the body's core muscles are the foundation for all other movement.

Core stability is an essential determinant of success for all sports people; cyclists, runners or swimmers, football players, rugby players, golfers or rowers. Even those whom are not into sports, every day people will benefit from great core stability. That’s because the body's core muscles are the foundation for all other movement.

The muscles of the torso stabilise the spine and provide a solid foundation for movement in the extremities. These core muscles lie deep within the torso. They generally attach to the spine, pelvis and muscles that support the scapula. When these muscles contract, we stabilise our spine, pelvis and shoulders and create a solid base of support. We are then able to generate powerful movements of the extremities.

The biggest benefit of core training is to develop functional fitness - that is, fitness that is essential to both daily living and regular activities. However, training the muscles of the core also corrects postural imbalances that may lead to injuries. Indeed, core stability is now seen as an essential attribute for any player or person whom seeks to keep their chances of sports injury or muscle imbalances to the absolute minimum.

Training for Core Stability with Vibes Fitness we show you – how best to build core body strength and stamina, then how to maintain and use it to best effect.

Here at VIBES FITNESS we keep up to date with a wide range of academic sports science journals, we’re able to bring this new, evidence-based thinking direct to you. Now you can assess these new findings for yourself, and decide how best to integrate them into your core training and conditioning regimes.

1. How can you actively counteract the negative effects on your levels of core stability caused by your largely sedentary day job?
2. Core Stability training strategies – what are the exercises that every athlete should consider building into their regular conditioning programs?
3. Pilate's is an increasingly popular form of core stability conditioning – but done incorrectly it poses the risk of chronic injury.
4. Which core stability training exercises are best done with a Swiss Ball – and which should be avoided?
5. What’s the best way to train your lower back and pelvis for maximum core stability?
6. How can your improve your running performance simply by strengthening your butt muscles?
7. Swimmers: what’s the link between core stability and shoulder injury – and what practical steps can you take to avoid future problems?

1. The Effects of a Sedentary Life-Style

Sitting for long periods during the day can adversely affect your performance in your chosen sport and is quite often a predisposing factor in injury.

Most of us are not professional athletes and spend large chunks of our day sitting hunched over a computer, in a vehicle or slumped on the sofa.

Such prolonged sitting can cause all or some of the following problems:

• Tight hip flexor, hamstring and calf muscles
• Tightness through the external hip rotator muscles, which can lead to restricted movement at the hip joint
• Reduced extension through the lower back, causing stiffness in the mid (thoracic) spine
• Tight and hunched shoulders with weak lower shoulder muscles
• Tight and weak muscles at the back of the shoulder
• “Poked chin” posture and muscle imbalances in the neck and upper shoulders

Prolonged sitting has also been linked to acute muscle strains in dynamic sports, in particular hamstring strains. That’s because the lower back stiffness associated with sitting leads to altered nerve input into the rear thigh. This can manifest as increased muscle tone of the hamstrings, which will increase the risk of strain.

While for swimmers and triathletes, muscular imbalances and weaknesses in the shoulders and mid-spine (caused by spending much of the day hunched over a computer screen) can lead to a shoulder impingement/tendonitis injury.

Here at Vibes Fitness our team explains that Training for Core Stability is essential and we teach you what active measures you can take, first to recognise the impact of your working environment on your physical condition, and secondly, how you can counteract these and ensure that your day job is not undermining your efforts to achieve sporting success or great core stabilisers muscles.

There are five exercises designed to help you build and maintain flexibility. All of them can easily be performed at home or in the gym as they require no special sports equipment.

2. Building Core Stability – practical training menus FOR EVERYONE

There are three major groups of exercise:

• those focusing on getting the small deep lying stabilising muscles (such as the lower abdominals and deep spinal muscles) to work properly. These exercises are often taken from clinical Pilate's.
• static bodyweight exercises that concentrate on developing stability and/or strength endurance in certain postures. These need you to learn how simultaneously to work your small stabiliser muscles and the larger mobiliser muscles. One popular example is the ‘plank’.
• traditional dynamic strength exercises for the main movement muscles of the trunk, often performed on the floor or Swiss ball. While sports therapists use a variety of approaches, it is common to start you off working on the first type of exercise (how to use the smaller stability muscles properly) and then progress to more strength-based work as your injury improves.

Core stability work is by no means confined to the rehab clinic. It is for everyone.. Sports physicians, physiotherapists and strength and conditioning coaches also recommend that their clients perform regular core stability or trunk strength exercises to prevent injury. The rationale for prophylactic training is that increased recruitment of the stabiliser muscles and increased strength of the prime movers (main movement muscles) will carry over into better posture and more control, both in daily life and in sporting movements.

So it is very likely you will have come across some core stability exercises through your local sports club, gym or any other general training context.

Most of us tend to have a list of three or four of these exercises that we include in our workouts each week.

While this rehabilitative strategy is well intentioned it has two limitations.

The first is behavioural. Core stability exercises can quite quickly become ‘bore stability’! It takes self-discipline to do 20 to 30 minutes of the same exercises three or more times a week over a long period, so most of us lapse, or at best skimp on this part of the workout after a while.

The second limitation is physiological. The key training principles of specificity and progression apply to core work in the same way that they do to any other aspect of physical fitness. It is quite common for an athlete to perform the same core routine over a long period and get very good at four or five movements or ‘holds’. But teach the same athlete a new core exercise and they will find it difficult, simply because it’s a new stimulus.

The message is that progression and variety are the keys to optimising benefits of a strengthening programme.

We will show you how Core Stability Training aims to overcome the problems of non-compliance and lack of challenge. We provides a system where an individual can follow prophylactic or rehabilitative core stability and strengthening program using a wide variety of movements to maximise adaptations for improvement, and which muscle groups are targeted for training.

Call us today to improve your core stability.