A strong and stable core is critical to maximizing your true athletic potential. Wether you want to throw harder, run faster, jump higher or just be a better all around athlete, proper core strength will help you to maximize your potential.
The core serves two main roles for athletes
#1 – The core transfers force from your lower-body to your upper-body.
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. As you perform an athletic movement like throwing, swinging, running or jumping, your lower body produces force. That force is transferred up the kinetic chain (lower-body to core, then core to upper-body).
If you have a weak core, you’ll have a leakage of strength or force. If this happens, you won’t use all the strength and power in your lower body.
#2 – It protects the spine
Proper core strength is critical to protecting your spine from injury. When your core is weak, you’ll compensate with your lower back. The problem with this is that, overtime, this may contribute to lower back pain.
Avoid these 3 Core Exercises
1) Sit-ups
Sit-ups are an exercise that require a lot of spinal flexion and studies have shown that constant spinal flexion may have many negative effects.
If you couple this with the fact that most athletes have poor thoracic spine mobility, you are only feeding into this problem by doing sit-ups.
2) Side bends
Side bends are a core exercise that involve lateral spinal flexion. The problem with this is, you’re not building stability throughout the core.
In order to effectively protect your spine and to help you transfer power from your lower body to your upper body, you need to have a stable core.
3) Bi-cycle crunches
If you look at the spine during bicycle crunches you’ll notice: rounding of the back & forward head posture. These are two positions athletes should avoid at all times.
Choose your core exercises wisely! Here at GameChanger we avoid these types of exercises and instead focus on exercises that create stability in the core because they are the types of exercises that will help transfer force more effectively and protect your spine from injury.
All the best,
Joe Meglio
