The first question when beginning a core muscle group exercise is usually, What is my core and where is it located? The answer to that question is, the core has been defined as the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex or (LPHC).
It is where the body's center of gravity is located and from where all movement originates.
Proper recruitment of these muscles not only ensures proper acceleration, deceleration and stabilization during exercise, but also aides in preventing possible injuries.
The core or LPHC is made up of two categories of muscle groups.
1) the stabilization system-inside muscle group and 2) the movement system-outside muscle group.
The stabilization system is responsible for the stability of the LPHC and includes the transverse abs, internal obliques, lumbar, pelvic muscles, diaphragm.
The movement system consist of the lats, hamstrings, hip adductors, hip abductors, rectus absominus, and external obliques.
When traing the core it is important to start from the inside out.
In other words train the stabilization system before starting the external system.
You need the foundation before you can build the walls.
having a strang stabilization system is necessary in order to build and support the strong and firm movement system.
There are a series of exercise that work well for strengthening the core and they are broken down into which group of muscles you they will target.
INSIDE MUSCLE GROUP 1) Hip Extension 2) Hip Abduction 3) Ball Bridge 4) Prone Iso-ab 5) Side lying Iso-ab OUTSIDE MUSCLE GROUP 1) Back extension 2) Reverse bench crunch 3) Reverse bench crunch with rotation 4) Ball Crunch 5) Cable rotation 6) Cable lift These exercises should be performed with the proper drawing-in motion(navel drawn in to spine) and in a controlled fashion.
They should be performed anywhere from once a week to every workout each week.