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You Train Your Core. What Are You Missing? · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You say that you train your core, but are you training everything that you think you are?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well in this episode, I'm gonna go over the three essential points of core training that most people miss.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm even gonna give you a bonus point at the very end.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Making Muscle Memories Podcast.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Lauren Eark, and in this episode, I'm gonna talk with you about one of my favorite topics, core training.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have been in this industry for a long time, and I had no idea how important training the core was when I very, very first started.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, if anyone was ever like me, back in the 80s, when everyone used to take classes, the focus was always the exercise.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was the movement, it was the dance, right?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the core that was always thrown in at the very end, and most people would leave your class because they wanted to jump on the stairmaster to keep getting their heart rate going because that was always the most important piece.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, fast forward, I now am a business owner.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have a facility in Louisville, Kentucky where I perform muscle activation techniques and personal training.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I work a lot with people with injuries, and one thing that I have seen is that people tend to have a weak core across the board.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I usually work with my clients both in person as well as online.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a ton of clients that I just work with online, and I can tell you hands down, when it comes to feeling better, people that work with their core, people that do core training exercises, tend to have less joint pain and that are sidelined less, sidelined a lot less than someone with a weak core.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you think about it, when we're a baby and you're first come out of the womb, you're trying to sit up, you're trying to roll over, you're trying to push yourself up off of your crib, you're trying to sit and balance your head, and then over time we're trying to stand up and walk.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: These are all skills that focus on the core, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we have to flip babies over in the beginning because they don't even have that ability to rotate through the core in the in when we're a newborn.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting when you watch adults, I'm doing the same thing myself, as people age, the skills that they learned as an infant start to diminish almost in the same way.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: They lose rotation, they lose their ability to sit up straight, they lose their ability to come up from lying down.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So because we're living in a sedentary culture, I'm sure you've read this through the headlines, sitting, being on a computer, having poor posture, not having things where we have to go out and do work like we had to work out in the fields, it has made our cores very, very weak.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think a lot of people, when they think of core training, and I and I hear this all the time, well, we work on our core at the end.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, we, I don't know, throw kettleballs around a circle, or we do plank exercises, or you know, we do ropes and stuff.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are some really important aspects to core training that I want to go over in this episode that you may not have thought of.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: These are going to be really rooted in the field of biomechanics, which I spent many years studying and still study to this day, that really dictate how we need to function as humans, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let's first start off with, I feel like the benchmark of where most people think core training sits, and that is activities like yoga and Pilates.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that right now I feel like yoga and Pilates are really getting a bad rap.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, back in the 90s and 2000s, they were considered to be the pinnacle of fitness.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And now everybody says they're not enough to build muscle, blah, blah, blah, they're a waste of time.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you this: having done decades and decades of work in studying those particular activities, they can be very challenging.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I would challenge anybody that thinks that they don't build muscle for somebody, depending on where they start.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have to disagree.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It just depends on the person, their goal, where their benchmark is.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: However, if I were going to look at core training, you would think that if I put, for instance, a Pilates person on my table and I'm talking about evaluating their muscles and I'm doing an MAT session, you would think that those people would own core training, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you, one thing I've learned across the years, the decades of work is that a lot of times it's the yoga and Pilates people that are the most weak in their core.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's crazy, but the only thing I can I can really relate it to is that these particular activities, because they're so focused on being able to move to a specific range of motion, that they're sort of forcing themselves to.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so by doing that, they've actually made their muscles a lot weaker.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I do think these activities can build core strength, but hopefully by the end of this episode, I hope it helps you, right?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about the first step.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the first step towards building a stronger core is really going to be about starting a muscle contraction, learning how to contract muscles.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: We think about contraction, muscle contractions.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about, you know, how can I control this motion?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, having taken a lot of yoga in my life, you know, yoga positions are basically you're trying to put put yourself into a position and you try to force yourself in that position a lot of times, at least when I very first started doing yoga, and if you couldn't, people would give you these adjustments to make you.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you an example.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sitting on the ground, bending forward and touching your toes.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a forward bend, or laying on your stomach and performing a trunk extension pose, the cobra, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so we tend to think of people that do these postures as being very advanced in their core because we see pictures of them and they can move a certain amount of motion.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we're going to learn through this episode, just because I can move through an available range of motion does not always mean that I'm particularly strong there.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if I try to force myself into those positions with no connection, it can actually make me weaker.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that I use all the time in both my in-person as well as online clients and FIS on demand, I always tell them we have to connect the muscles first.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is activation.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about activation, there has to be a brain-to-muscle connection.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if I was standing up.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen somebody standing up and they're just waiting in line or standing and they fall asleep?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that they're contracting their muscles while they're sleeping?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they allowed why are they able to do this?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: If if I'm standing up, sitting in a chair or sitting against a wall, the reason I'm able to fall asleep is because my muscles aren't online.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm standing, I'm in that position, but my muscles aren't really contracting.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't being utilized.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And for people that are hyper-flexible, which if you ever have taught or studied yoga and Pilates, ballet, dance, martial arts, these people tend to look like they have really strong cores because they can go into those positions, but it absolutely does not mean that there's any connection whatsoever.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen people come into class the very first day, put their face on the ground in a forward bend, and they just lay there and have a conversation with you.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was literally no connection from brain to muscle.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So how do I get a connection?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have to learn how to squeeze these muscles.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we and I'm gonna talk about these in a second, but we think about the idea of a challenge.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: If I go into a forward bend and there's no challenge, and I feel like I can just be there and my muscles don't have to engage, then there's no reason that your body is gonna generate enough energy to make muscle fibers get closer together and create a muscle contraction.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the benchmark for being stronger.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And why do we need a strong core?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because we want to pick up things in our environment.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be able to sit up straight.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to have to fall, we want to be able to keep our bones healthy.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, osteoporosis of the spine, I work with a lot of people with that that have had a weak core for many, many years, and it is not pretty.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone that's ever had that and suffered from vertebral fracture, usually the fracture is the next thing that happens after somebody falls, which is another result of having a weak muscular system.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to give our muscles a reason to contract.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: On my platform, FIS on Demand, I have so many core training programs that I've created over the years.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for this is because everybody that I see and test an MAT, the first thing, they're always weak in their core.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Always.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Trunk rotation being the worst and the most important one, right?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's first thing we learn is we're a baby.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do we roll over?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're just rotating through space, think of the Pilates spine twist, and I'm sitting up straight, and all I'm doing is rotating.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's not strengthening my core.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: All it's doing is trying to keep me to sit up straight when my legs are in a specific position, and I'm just trying to coordinate movement with breath.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me a lot of a dance class for some people.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for some people, it is hard for them to sit up straight, which, if that's the case, I don't know that a spine twist exercise is really the best thing for them to do because they're already having a hard time sitting on the ground.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want them to do is start twisting when they're slouching and they can't even sit up straight and their lower back hurts, but that's another story.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to have that isometric connection.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is an isometric?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am taking this person into their full range of motion under tension, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So can you see that there's a difference between sitting up doing a spine twist and laying on the floor resisting gravity and doing an oblique twist?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very, very, very different.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to be able to give my body a reason to contract.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this a lot of times is done when I do isometric contractions.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I might have someone go into a traditional exercise like a crunch.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times people have just gone and they just counted reps and they go, oh, I did my core training class.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But they never learn how to engage those muscles.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So slowing them down, having them really cue, ribs to hips, and then going to the very end range or they're drawing their bottom rib and the top of the pelvis together, and then they're trying to engage those muscles and squeeze them.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of people, that has never happened.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I can remember when I was in my 20s, I would be assigned these core training classes on the group fitness schedule, and they would be like, you know, 30 minutes of core, and then we'd just be done and everybody would be, you know, able to continue doing it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I realize you should be able to cook your core in a few minutes.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're doing 30 minutes of it of crunches, something is probably wrong.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second one, the second essential tip is that we want to develop control.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: What are we trying to accomplish with our core?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of people think of core training as being in plank.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Planking and a lot of these anti-rotation stability exercises, I use those a lot, both in my my in-person clients as well as on my online platform, especially if I've got somebody with maybe a stenosis problem, maybe they're dealing with spinalolesthesis or osteoporosis, something like that, and they've been told by their doctor not to move.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in those situations, you don't really have much of a choice.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have to create exercises around someone who, you know, around a spine that stays pretty stable.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, if you think about it, Plank is not really the best exercise in the world.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is neutral for the spine.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: You are, you know, obviously in a great moment arm.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, my my distance of the joint axes to towards the line of force is pretty much zero.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm excuse me at a nine at a 90 degree angle because gravity is coming this way and my spine's going this way.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I am at a 90 degree force angle.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: You see the difference if I'm standing up straight, gravity is running through me.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm if I'm in a plank, I'm perpendicular to that straight line of gravity.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you can see that.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not asking spinal flexors, the muscles that attach from the bottom of the rib to the top of the pelvis, they are not shortening.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: The vertebral bodies are not moving into flexion.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm holding a neutral position no different than if I was standing up, which is virtually no stress on the core.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So holding a plank for five minutes or a minute, to me, that's not really a benchmark of true strength.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to move through our available range.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, from what I can tell, working with many individuals, they have never even explored this.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are the four motions that a core needs to go through?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, flexion.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this might look like a crunch, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, extension, moving backwards.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And who works on that ever in their training programs, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Bending backwards.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, or excuse me, number three is rotation.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we can rotate from the right to the left.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our shoulders and hips are gonna be involved in those, really in all of these exercises, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And are we symmetrical as we rotate from left to right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And also we call this lateral flexion or side bending, and that's when one side of our body contracts into a shortened position and the other side eccentrically allows for that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So those are gonna be the four essential motion patterns that we want to visit.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we want to visit those under control.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that I have somebody that has a fusion, which is so common, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that somebody has a fusion at L5S1 or at L4, L5, or maybe the whole thing.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that going to affect how well that person goes into extension or flexion?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because that vertebral unit won't move.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the things that I had a hard time with with something like yoga, because I'll tell you a story.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in a class once, and if anyone has ever studied ashtanga yoga, ashtanga yoga, there's certain series of poses that you can do.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, like for instance, in first series, which is a series of like the famous series that everybody wants to get through, first series has a set of postures that is sort of like associated with all of Ashtanga, all the standing poses, all the balance poses that are associated with it, and the sun citation A and B.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get into first series, these are all the forward bends.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, second series, which I always thought this was weird because you have to get into every single pose of first series.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to do them well, and there are some twisting postures, and there, you know, obviously in the sun citation, there are some trunk extension poses, but there's no real forced backward bends.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even get to those until you can do everything in first series, which nobody ever, I mean, there's very few people that can very well, unless you've just you're just gifted, you've got a body for it, and you do it all the time.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get to second series, that's when people start with their back bends.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I always thought to myself, why shouldn't we do and be doing backward bends now?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I've I have seen people where they have had a lot of pain once they get into backward bending because they've spent all the first series, you know, getting pushed into their forward bends because the goal was I want to reach forward and grab my toes and a forward bend or something like that, or I want to be in triangle, come forward and put my hand on the ground.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have forced our spine to go into all these positions.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've been an upward-facing dog and just pushed into the ground and cranked into some of these postures.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And again, go back to that first step.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: If we've never engaged those muscles under tension, it doesn't mean just because I can go there that I actually have strength there.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about we have to learn how to control, for a lot of people, they've never really explored their range of motion.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I do as an MAT specialist and as a personal trainer, even on my app, I teach people how to observe their range of motion.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if I don't have the same kind of trunk rotation going to the left as I do going to the right, then I should expect much of my activities to be asymmetrical.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: If I am not adhering to that and I'm just cranking myself into stuff, especially when you start adding like inertial training with, you know, throwing kettlebells around or using ropes or whatever people do for their core training exercises, you can see that I could potentially be flying past the available range of motion that I have and I'm not working on control.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, one rule that I always have with my clients, if you want to go fast, you better demonstrate to me that you can go slow first.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: You better demonstrate to me that you understand what your available range is given your injury history.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've had fusions, maybe you have some rods in your back, maybe you have some vertebral areas that by birth hereditary, you can't move at certain ways because your facet joints are angled differently and you don't have that motion available.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't learned how to control and how to observe your ranges of motion, what in the world are we doing fast-paced kettlebell work?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You are asking for an injury.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to control these motions after we've learned how to engage our muscles, you can see how those first two steps go hand in hand.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like for a lot of people, this is the end of their core training, right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they want to go play baseball, they want to go play pickleball, they want to go play golf, what are you doing to prepare for these things?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are you learning how to squeeze your muscles?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you doing your isometrics?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And are you controlling these, observing all of your available ranges of motion?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is extremely important.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't have any left trunk rotation, but I rotate to my left every single time I swing a golf club, you wonder why your shoulder hurts, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a big part of core training.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for my third essential point, and this is oh my gosh, so important.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure that I match the resistance for whatever it is that I'm actually trying to challenge.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does this mean?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I I love Pilates.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think Pilates is great.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do I think Pilates is the most challenging thing for the core?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna anger some Pilates people.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've studied Pilates for many, many years, and I have to say that there are some definite nuances.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are some definite intricate challenges that go along with Pilates.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: If I had to give Pilates kudos, it would be awareness, breathing awareness, working on the respiratory system, the transverse abdominus uh position, the core, the uh pelvic floor health, working with control, trying to keep the springs from pulling me too quickly into a position.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But so much of Pilates, because I'm not talking about Matt Pilates as much as I am working with a reformer.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you never know what a reformer is.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a total gym that's lying straight on its back.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm lying down and I'm in the same position as the springs, which is the spring, which is represented through the cable or the rope that is put in my hand or into my feet as I'm rolling back and forth on the carriage.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: If, let's say that I'm gonna do a Pilates rollover, and if you've never done that, a rollover is the same as the plow pose in yoga or a reverse crunch in fitness.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that I have my feet stuck in straps, the straps are behind are are are behind me, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're pulling me towards them, and I put my feet in the straps and I go into hip flexion.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I raise my legs up.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that the straps are pulling me this way.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I roll through, I can use a little bit of abdominal strength, but then the the springs are pulling me back that way.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might make the arrow, well, I wanted that.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted that person to be able to go into that rollover because I want to work their lower abs, which by the way, well, lower abs, we have internal obliques, but as far as lower abs, not everybody even has them, but that's another story.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say I want to do a reverse crunch.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm inverting the action from moving the hips on the trunk and the trunk on the hips, or excuse me, on the on the core.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: The the machine, the reformer, is actually assisting me.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting me up further than I could do on my own, which is it's if that's a very significant thing because let's say that this person, because of their lever lengths, because of the length of their legs versus the length of their torso, they maybe shouldn't be in that position.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: They shouldn't be lifting up on their shoulders or their neck doesn't allow for that.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And now this machine is pulling me over, but there's very little abdominal response because the the straps are doing that.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now I could certainly let go of some of the spring tension.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I could make the rope longer, I could make me have to work a little bit harder, but still it's not necessarily providing resistance.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Another example.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So all of these things need to really be addressed.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm going to use gravity as my resistance, gravity goes one way.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want to work my lateral flexors, I've got to make sure that I'm laying on the floor sideways so that gravity is pushing me into the ground, and then I have to push up against it so that the bottom half is not going into side bend.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: If in something like a side plank exercise.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: If I want to work on a backward bend, it's going to be harder for me to do a trunk extension exercise lying flat on my stomach than it is standing up and bending backwards, which gravity is assisting me from doing.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: If I want to use cables, right?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: If I want to use a cable, I want to make sure that the cable is opposing the force lines that I'm using.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that I go back to the idea of the reformer.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: If I want to do a rotation exercise, and then when I rotate, the cable is running across my body and it's just sort of sitting there, it's not really adding that much more resistance to what I'm doing.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm doing this sitting up, then I don't really have a lot of resistance into rotation unless that cable was coming in at a scoop at a certain angle and it was causing me to pull myself out of it.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the same Token, I've got to make sure that the muscles that I'm using are actually being active right now, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of people like I'd be doing a bridge position on a ball.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a bridge position, my head is on the ball, my abs are on top, and if I look at how gravity is pushing me to the ground, I would be pushed into hip flexion, I'd be pushed down to spinal flexion.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had trainers tell me, oh, the bridge pose works your abs.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: The abs are not under tension.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually for the back of the body because I'm using my glutes and extensor muscles to come up.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: By the same token, if I use the stability ball in my core training, I am challenging my ability to hold still, but I may not be challenging the very muscles that I'm trying to use.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like sitting on a ball is great for challenging my neuromuscular system, maybe my posture to sit up straight or balancing my center of mass because I'm on an unstable surface.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: But just sitting on a ball does not make my abs work harder than sitting on the ground, laying on my back and doing a crunch.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I know this is a lot, I'm throwing a lot at you, but we have to make sure that whatever resistance that we are using, if we decide we're going to use external resistance, which we have to, whether that's be gravity, body weight, a cable, or on some unstable device, standing or sitting on a ball is not going to do the same as doing a crunch on the ground if I'm trying to work my abs, right?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have to make sure that the resistance opposes the line of force that the muscles are creating.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those two have to create opposition for there to be resistance.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go over the three.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have to activate those muscles.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be able to squeeze them.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be able to have a brain-body connection.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: We also have to make sure that we understand our range of motion.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make sure that we are able to control that range of motion and that we are doing a variety of ranges of motion.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just doing crunches is not going to give you a strong core.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have to work on rotation, we have to work on extension, we have to work on side-bending.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, we have to make sure that we are aligning our body to oppose whatever form of resistance that we want to use, whether that be body weight from gravity or from some external thing like a you know a cable or a dumbbell or something like that.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've listened to this whole episode, I'm going to show you I'm talking a lot, I could talk forever about this topic.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is the fourth point?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have to revisit these steps over and over and over.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have to maintain what you've built.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you started in isometrics and you now have bilateral range of motion, you think, in rotation from left to right with isometrics, it doesn't mean just because now you've graduated into working on a cable system with a with a handle in your hand and you're using a weight stack performing trunk rotation, it doesn't mean that you don't have to go backwards and revisit the isometrics.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, anytime I add a new challenge to my core, and that challenge might be sitting in a plane cross-country going to Europe, and now I've obliterated my core, I may have to go back and re-establish the brain-body connection.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So these steps that I told you, these three essential steps, you're gonna need to revisit those over and over throughout your life.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you notice you have pain, you have stiffness, or you have compensated motion.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're somebody that's had a spinal surgery, or if you're now dealing with a spinal condition like osteoporosis or spinalolysthesis, spondalolysis, whatever, stenosis, you're gonna have to do these for the rest of your life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you can wrap your brain around that because you know what?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Exercise can be fun.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to give yourself permission to go forwards and backwards.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Show up for what your body needs on a given day and don't give up.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is wasted.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this exercise, excuse me, I hope that this episode helped you.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if it did, please feel free to forward it to somebody that you know that I can help.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please, if you like the episode, consider giving me a five star review.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, if you're on YouTube right now, give me a comment.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know if this uh resonated with you, and if you'd like to share something, I would love to hear.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for watching.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Keep working your core, and I'll see you on the next episode.