[Mike Young]

Mike Young on October 31, 2008 at 12:42 am #14986

While I do have a physioball that I used as my office chair at West Point and I don’t have any problem with them being a PART of a balanced core training routine, this video pretty much sums up my feelings on unstable surface training and the way it’s been pushed as the or athletic development. By the way, what is “Core Stability”? Has anyone seen a reasonable definition that holds up against

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[BLogaN]

BLogaN on November 1, 2008 at 4:52 am #73866

I believe Core $tability was a marketing term coined to give businesses a false competitive advantage over traditional nomenclature.

[JeremyRichmond]

JeremyRichmond on November 1, 2008 at 1:18 pm #73888

I too am glad the worhsipping of core stability is on the decline. In the PT industry core stability used to be associated with everything from tennis elbow to night-time performance.

Here’s a question: what type of exercise maximally recruits muscles of the core?

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on November 2, 2008 at 11:31 am #73927

I believe Core $tability was a marketing term coined to give businesses a false competitive advantage over traditional nomenclature.

Totally agree.

ELITETRACK Founder

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on November 2, 2008 at 11:32 am #73928

Here’s a question: what type of exercise maximally recruits muscles of the core?

Heavy squats, deadlifts, and cleans? High load, maximal contraction, long (relatively) time under tension.

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[JeremyRichmond]

JeremyRichmond on November 2, 2008 at 12:19 pm #73931

Those exercises are not it but they are extremely good true tests of core stabilisation strength (CSS). Squats and deadlift were shown to be good for strengthening paraspinal muscles (Hamlyn -JCSR- I think).

The one exercise that maximally recruits abdominal muscles (and every other muscle in fact)is sprint running. In fact, recruitment of abdominal muscles went above maximum voluntary isometric contraction.

Yes you heard it here. We belong to the greatest exercise prescription in the world. Apologies as I can’t find the references though I’ve been looking through my 800 odd studies.

However, the stimulus of sprint training would be too high for most people first up so we need to condition ourselves for it. I’ve seen some pretty good conditioning programs lately. 😉

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on November 2, 2008 at 12:24 pm #73932

You know, I’ve actually seen the study in question as well but I remember thinking that there were serious flaws in there methodology that might have compromised the conclusions. If you can find it it will refresh my memory as to what I was thinking.

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