Training the "core"..practical matters

In my previous post, I alluded to what I believe the "core" of your body is.  I'm a firm believer of it being your glutes (your butt) and not necessarily your abdominal muscles or lower back muscles.  However, we can argue that including your upper back muscles may be practical in terms of defining the "core."

Focusing on your glutes, you can engage them every single day if you want.  You can also set aside time for you to go ahead and train them.  The daily engagement is simple, if you're standing....and you should be as often as you can, you should squeeze your butt every few seconds.  This is a simple method that can have profound effects on your posture, your pain or lack thereof, and honestly your well-being.  It's something that you can do wherever you are such as at work, home, sporting events, or whatever.  

As far as training the glut
es are concerned, this is a little trickier.  The simplest exercise you can perform for this would be a bridge.  The bridge can be done in a variety of ways, from simple repetitions to holds to increasing resistance with a dumbbell, barbell, or kettlebell.  There are advantages of all of these, but the glutes do respond well to increased resistance (weight), and therefore to maximize the effectiveness you should probably focus on the weight rather than the sets or repetitions.  

Barbell bridges, and better yet barbell hip thrusters, are probably one of the single best glute exercises that you can perform.  However this does not come without adversity, the barbell in the hip crease (basically your thigh meeting your pelvic bone) is extremely uncomfortable.  A way around this is to use a squat pad or a towel or a combination of these items to dull the pressure that the bar would place on that area.  From there, it's pretty simple, push until your glutes are squeezed together.  If you can do this successfully, you will find that not only are your glutes becoming stronger, but the rest of you as well.  

There are more methods to training your "core" but this is by far the best.  Not for the faint of heart, but to become stronger and overall better, this is something that should be incorporated into your training. 

What is your "core?"

When you think of your body's "core," what do you think of?  Are you thinking of the center of your body?  Are you thinking of your abdominal muscles or even your lower back muscles?  What about your legs?  Do you think those are your "core?"

These questions are all pretty legitimate in terms of describing your "core."  However, everyone I speak with has a different definition of what the "core" actually is.  In truth, all of the questions above can all be the correct answers, though each person would likely identify with only one of those rather than all of them.

My perspective of what the core is are the gluteus maximus muscle (glutes).  The glutes are the largest single muscle in the human body and are predominant in allowing for us to stand upright, walk, and perform a plethora of activities.  If the glutes are strong, typically the muscles around the glutes are strong with it.  Hence, if you call the glutes the "core" then you are likely the most accurate in terms of defining it.

If you look at the apple core above, you can see that the core is in the center and lengthwise, therefore it's larger than only isolated in the center.  But, if you look at the direct center, you can see it is the largest area of the core.  So we can look at the glutes as that center, the abdominals, and erector spinae as the upper end towards the stem and the legs to include the hamstrings and quadriceps as the lower core.  So, the core is much larger, in my mind, than most make it out to be.

I'll be spending a few more posts describing training the core and how to focus and engage it.