This week's edition of River Weekly profiled the exercise (swiss) ball and its uses in core training. Here's a little more information on the core and its importance in injury prevention.
Injury prevention—this is a term, as athletes, we have probably heard a thousand times, maybe more, maybe enough that we gloss over it in our mind with canned axioms (more stretching, icing, taking care of pain so that it doesn’t develop into injury, etc), maybe enough that we fail to consider it at its core. Injury prevention, at its core, depends on the strength of the athlete’s core.
Athletic injuries are most often a result of overuse, and injuries from overuse are commonly associated with a lack of core strength in an athlete. For example, weak hip muscles causes the hip/trunk position to be askew when the foot strikes the ground while running. This is a frequent cause of knee injury.
In basic terms, core strength is essential in bodily alignment, which minimizes overloads on joints, and it is a foundation for strength in the limbs, which helps bodily movements to be more efficient. To effectively train the core, an athlete needs to concentrate on more than just the abs (rectus abdominis).
The core includes the following muscles: Transverse Abdominis, Rectus Abdominis, Multifidus, External Obliques, Internal Obliques, Quadratus Lumborum and Erector Spinae. In simpler terms, it is the abs, obliques, and muscles of the mid/lower back and hips.
This means that a strong core starts not only with the abs, but with the back and hips as well. So, training these areas, whether it be a concentrated movement designed to target core (like crunches and hip rotations) or a byproduct of another exercise (such as lunges and dead lifts) is essential in optimal athletic performance and injury prevention.
Stay tuned for some sample core exercises/workouts!
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