What does a strong "core" look like?

If you have ever experienced back pain you will likely have been told to strengthen your “core”. But what exactly does this mean? I think most people imagine doing crunches and planks and picture a six pack of abs when imagining a strong core.

To me a strong core is so much more than abs, in fact developing a strong responsive core requires us to investigate how we breathe, how our hips function and how/how much we move on a daily basis.

Over the next few weeks we are going to take a look at the hips, core & pelvic floor creating an awarenesses of what is going on in our bodies and creating the conditions for change where needed so we can build a strong responsive core.

Let’s get started by defining what the core is.

The muscles fo the core.

We should start small and then we’ll expand in further blog posts. For this post let’s stick to the abdominal and pelvic cavities. At the top of the abdominal cavity we have the diaphragm, a dome shaped muscle that facilitates breathing. As we inhale the diaphragm moves down as the lungs expand and as we exhale the diaphragm moves back up to help empty the lungs. The pelvic floor at the bottom of the pelvic cavity moves in a similar but more subtle fashion, as we inhale the pelvic floor expands to make room for the internal organs shifting down as the diaphragm move down, as we exhale the internal organs move up and the pelvic floor lifts back up into neutral.

In the front of the abdominal cavity we have the transverse abdominis (as well as the other abdominal muscles) which should be moving out as we inhale and draw in as we exhale. Finally we have the multifidus in the back along the spine (again this is a simplified model, obviously there are many more muscles in the back helping to create this container).

Now that we have an idea of what the core is, lets take a look at how it functions and why it might be important to observe our ideas around good and bad posture and why breathing might be important when we are experiencing persistent pain related to a “weak” core.

As we begin to redefine what it looks and feels like to have a strong core lets be easy with ourselves. Postural habits are deeply ingrained and can be very tricky to let go of, change can be slow but it is definitely worth it.

Keep an eye out for the next post on the core and breathing.