How Core-dinated Are You?

Your body is a fluid system built on solid parts. In order for your fluid system to function well, it has to be attached to a solid center. Your arms and legs are meant to be mobile, but your center needs to be stable. Your spine is like the foundation of a building, and your limbs are like the framing. It doesn’t matter how strong the framing is, if it’s not built on a solid foundation the building collapses

One of the key points in the operation of your body is keeping your core stable. Your core has to be stable so that your limbs attach to something firm and solid. In addition, movement requires that there be little to no loss of force from limb to limb through the middle. Finally as we explained in the post about hip/shoulder ROM, a stable core promotes proper mobility in the hips/shoulders. Without a stable center your limbs are unable to operate at peak efficiency.

This isn't about just athletic performance; moving from your center with a solid and stable core helps prevent neck, hip, shoulder, knee, elbow, ankle and wrist wear and tear. Without a solid and stable core your entire kinetic chain breaks down from this inside out! Where your body should be able to create, hold and transfer force changes to the joints and locations where it wasn’t meant to do so! So knees and elbows take a beating, hips and shoulders get tight from trying to stabilize, and even the neck gets thrown into a bad position to compensate for lack of stability through the middle.  

In movement, ironically, we give more attention to the moving parts than the non-moving parts. I want to stress the mentality of paying attention to the center first, and the limbs second in regard to functional movements. Functional movements are representations of the basic shapes that human beings need to be able to accomplish in order to express the proper range of motion an action of various joints throughout the body. For instance the deadlift is picking things up off the ground without compromising your spine, a squat is crouching with full ankle knee and hip range of motion, etc… Look at functional movements as a basic training manual for how to operate your body.

When you are working out focus on the center first. The limbs will take care of themselves. It’s a given that if you’re doing an overhead press your arms will extend upward. You cannot call it an “overhead press” if you don’t. It is not given, however, that you will do so with a solid core that promotes quality movement. This is because the movement is not called “maintain a stable midline while pressing a bar directly over your center of mass.” If it were called that we would be thinking about the core more, wouldn’t we?

This can be said of all functional movements. Don’t look at a front squat as “squat down with a bar on the front of your shoulders”, instead let it translate as; “maintain a stable midline with no loss of force  between feet and bar during the squat.” It’s a freaking given that you’ll squat! It’s not a given that you will do so with a solid and stable core. A solid and stable core, however, defines the upper limits of your skill with that movement.

Olympic lifting is fantastic for teaching advanced core techniques. To explode the hips fully open and pull them back again requires an incredible level of athletically cultivated core skill. The measure of a good olympic lift starts with one’s ability the generate a high enough force from opening the hips to get the bar weightless for a moment, then to retract the hips fast enough to get under the bar during it’s brief moment of weightlessness. To do this requires incredible skill through the center.

“Speed through the middle!” Coach Burgener says of his highly utilized “Burgener Warm-up”

During high intensity metcons, we should always be moving from the core. Its functionality during muscle ups, rowing, jumprope, pullups, squats, running, rope climbs, wall balls, thrusters etc… is the definition of those movements! It is your connection point to the fitness domains of strength, power, speed, agility, balance, flexibility, coordination, and accuracy! Move from your center. Keep your mind on your center; the limbs will take care of themselves.

You just have to start being aware of your core 100% of the time. You cannot cultivate what you’re not aware of. If you spend the 15 waking hours of your day training your core to be solid and stable from the moment you wake up, shower, drive to work, at work, sitting, standing, eating, chatting, driving to the gym... then the one hour you get in the gym will be neurologically primed for good movement. 

This doesn’t mean walk around with your core and glutes 100% tight; that would be hilariously stupid and you would probably pass out quite quickly. Reserve the 100% activation for 1 rep maxes and high intensity movement. 20% activation is enough for daily life, so long as there is some conscious activation and we don’t let the core “turn off.”

Consider the alternative; try to achieve high levels of skill during one hour in the gym after spending 15 hours in bad biomechanical positions. That would be much harder. How we move inside the gym is how we move outside the gym.

Everything you do is a “core” workout! Your glutes and abs should only turn off when you sleep or die! It is great to have a separate “core workout” once in a while to train the musculature in isolation, but that musculature has to then be enveloped into the whole of your being during movement. Treat “core workouts” as progressions to good movement. Cultivating this core musculature in everything you do helps keep your mind wired for proper athletic movement during the 15 hours you’re not working out. To do otherwise is a fantastic error that gimps your technique and movement.