Stop seeing abs/core work as an aesthetics only endeavour, remember my quote from previous blogs “appearance is a consequence of fitness”. In a nutshell don’t just work your core to get a six pack. Until you understand what the core actually does, it is then when you will understand why it is so important to have a strong core.

Your core muscles basically play a massive part of your everyday life. From getting out of bed in the morning, to walking to holding you up right. If you think about it your arms come off your core and so do your legs. So it’s the trunk in the middle that connects your lower body to your upper body (a lot like a tree). There is multiple layers of the abdominals. Each one helps control different spinal movements, for example the oblique’s muscles control transverse (side) movements. So therefore it is really important to exercise your core from different planes (angles).

I see so many people doing a stupid amount of sit ups, just trying to get those perfect abs. That is simply not going to work, that is just working your core through one plane of motion. Just going off key for one moment, you will never see your abs if you do not strip back your body fat anyway. Just wanted to point that out.

Okay back to the core, if your core is weak, other muscles are going to start compensating which then 99% of the time results in an injury. The most popular being the lower back. Also a weak core will lead to a poor technique in most of your important staple exercises in the gym like press ups and standing shoulder press etc.

So to some up, there is too many people who neglect their core when training. You need to introduce core exercises into your routines, but more importantly you need to work it through those different planes of motion. See attached videos of my examples of hitting the core from different planes of motion.

Please click the link to see the video: IMG_2717