Building Core Strength

by Dave Klecha

Last time, we talked about dull, right? Dull is the trade-off for fitness. You can try to jazz things up by running on a treadmill with a TV attached, or using aerobics videos featuring shapely young women–but especially with the latter, even that is going to get dull and repetitive. Why? Because fitness is not just about doing what you have to do right now in order to be fit, it’s continuing your fitness practices–exercise–as a lifestyle. Maybe you need to work a little harder in a specific period to train for something in particular, or shed some extra weight, but you’ll always have to maintain your fitness. And that can get boring, can feel like just another rut in a life full of them.

But if you got that, if you can deal with dull, then you can move on to one of the principles of physical strength and agility and that’s core strength.

Core strength, some argue, is best developed doing bodyweight exercises. Many of these, like crunches, pull-ups, and push-ups, don’t isolate and target a single muscle or group, but spread work over the entire body. In fact, you’ll find your abs and back working in a lot of of upper chest or arm exercises simply because you’re using those muscles to stabilize yourself. Pull-ups (gripping the bar underhand) and chin-ups (gripping overhand) are both excellent examples. Going underhand to do a pull-up seems a lot like a biceps exercise, since those muscles are performing the most contractions during the work-out. But it also works triceps, at the back of the arm, and lateral and deltoid muscles in the back and shoulders.

And you’ll find this is true, too, in daily physical activities. Even though you’re “bending at the knees” to lift that box, your back and abs are stabilizing the rest of your body, especially your arms which are doing the holding.

The best part about bodyweight exercise, of course, is that it’s free. You can do it anywhere, with little or no equipment. You don’t have to buy expensive equipment, or pay for a gym membership, or any of that stuff. And you can use a little more trial-and-error than is advisable around heavy weights or expensive gear.

Next: Variety, or Keeping Yourself Fit and Sane