Abs Are Not Core

Do you know what I mean by core?

Any idea why core is important?

So, you may be confused a bit because the common perspective of “abs” is an overused term and gets confused with core.

Let’s clear up that the core is made up of a lot of muscles and some of those are referred to as abdominals, but there are so many other muscles in the group that are very important and forgotten.

The other major issue is the core isn’t just for doing sit ups and crunches, or “ab burners” that is often sold by many programs.

Let’s look at what makes up our major core muscles

-          Pelvic floor

-          Transverse abdominis

-          Multifidus

-          Internal and external obliques,

-          Rectus abdominis (visual part)

-          Erector spinae

-          And Lastly diaphragm

The minor muscles are

-          Latissimus dorsi,

-          Gluteus maximus

-          Trapezius

Wow, I’m betting that is more detail than you even wanted to know…

The point of me listing and showing this is so you understand that your core is a very complex grouping of muscles to train, which is also attached to many other important muscles and shouldn’t be so simplified or commercialized for “burner routines”.

You can probably tell that core is the center of the body and its surrounding muscles. What you should now realize is that the core has a unique function – anti-movement programming.

Core is there to stabilize and coordinate the limbs together. So when you’re walking, your leg moves and needs to push off of your hips to propel you forward, and thus the core needs a certain amount of rigidity in it to stabilize the other limbs and torso.

Every time you squat, lift, push or pull, the core is doing something to prevent excessive movement so that you can coordinate the body throughout the action.

If you have a weight in front of you as you squat (goblet squat), your core is tight to your spine doesn’t crumble.

When you push another person away, you will tighten your core to channel the legs through your torso into your arms.

If you pull yourself up from the ground to do a chin up, you need a rigid torso so your arms can move your body up.

The main practice patterns are:

-          Anti-Extension – Sit up or crunch – if your abs were tight, you couldn’t lift your spine and thus extend backwards.

-          Anti-flexion – Good morning or Dead lift – if you didn’t have good back posture, your body will round downwards like a dog taking a poop.

-          Anti-lateral Flexion/Extension – Side planks or Single arm Carry – you want to lean away but your core stays tight.

-          Anti-rotation – Plank pointers or Paloff Press – you want to rotate but you keep your hip balanced.

All of these are all real applications of movement for life and definitely sport. Notice that I never said abdominal work was useless. I just said it’s only one piece of the puzzle, and it’s too often the only target.

The other major thing is, we NEED the core to move well, but the stability focus is often forgotten.

Look at these movements I just described, and now think of how that stability and coordination helps daily life!

If you focus only ab work, you’ll only practice getting out of bed.

Now I know the thing that gets you motivated to do a body part is to make it look good.

I get that. Trust me.

We need to realize that if we do these movements in our strength routine, we are building abdominals. Imagine instead of a goblet squat it’s now a Barbell with 135lbs total? Your whole core will be firing up.

What if I told you to build better quads, you may get a more efficient and functional workout through heavy squatting over leg extension machine. Isn’t that believable?

Bigger chest with a heavy bench press over a chest fly?

Remember that I’m NOT saying those other exercises aren’t helping, but I am pointing out the effectiveness and function of the more complex movements have a much more significant bang for the buck to transfer to life AND get you abdominal development.

Core is the center of your body mass and thus, the coordinator for everything. Without it, you likely would not have much stability or balance. There should be value to how you coordinate movement around your core all the time.

So, when you’re in the gym next time and want to do something to help build those abs, try thinking, “What anti-movement pattern can I train that will benefit me the most today?”