Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [53]
Where is my “core,” and do I need to strengthen it?
These days, it’s all about the core. Whether it’s yoga, Pilates, exercise balls, or dozens of other fitness programs and gadgets, there’s no greater selling point than a promise to improve your core stability. And researchers now agree—for the most part—that weak core muscles can indeed be a key culprit in everything from lower back pain to sports injuries, says Reed Ferber, a kinesiology professor who directs the University of Calgary’s Running Injury Clinic. “What people don’t agree on,” he adds, “is what the core is.”
In particular, there’s a tendency to focus too much on the abdominal and lower back muscles. But pelvic and hip muscles also play a crucial role in stabilizing the body during activity and are now generally considered part of the “core.” Ferber cites the example of a 40-year-old woman who came to him as a patient with knee pain. “She had a fantastic six-pack, and did Pilates or yoga six days a week,” he says. But the woman was unable to balance long enough to do a simple one-legged squat—bending at the knee while standing on one leg—because her hip muscles weren’t strong enough to provide balance. This instability was the root cause of her knee injury.
The same pattern was borne out by a seven-month study of patients at Ferber’s clinic, 92 percent of whom turned out to have abnormally weak hip muscles (and 89 percent of whom improved with four to six weeks of hip strengthening). Similarly, a University of Delaware study of basketball and track athletes found that the best predictor of who would develop leg injuries during the season was weakness in one of the hip muscles.
Even for the abdominal muscles, not all exercises are created equal. A study presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s 2008 annual meeting found that traditional crunches, which involve curling the torso up, mainly activate superficial “six-pack” muscles rather than the “deep abdominal” muscles that are more crucial for stability. The study, by Auburn University researcher Michele Olson, used EMG electrodes to compare muscle activation produced by various core exercises. Pilates exercises in which the torso stays unflexed, like the “Hundred” (lying on your back and lifting your legs at a 45-degree angle, with your arms at your side) and the “Double Leg Stretch” (similar to the “Hundred” but with your arms also raised at 45 degrees behind your head), were more effective than crunches at strengthening the deep abs instead of superficial muscles.
For elite athletes, designing a core program often begins with a detailed assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, in order to target the weakest areas. But that remains more of an art than a science, Ferber says, so most people would benefit from a fairly general core program—one that includes an activity like Pilates, but also incorporates some more functional exercises that mimic the range of motion used in whatever activity they participate in. His top suggestion, based on the people he sees at his clinic, is hip exercises, which are relevant for sports ranging from soccer to cycling. And working on the hips offers an important reminder, he adds: “The bottom line is a six-pack does not equal core stability.”
What are the benefits of yoga for physical fitness?
A few years ago, researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that a brief yoga session allowed high school track athletes to improve their time for a one-mile run by an average margin of one second. Not a particularly earth-shattering result—especially when you realize the same researchers