There's lots of talk about core exercise and there's lots of misperception about what true core strength is. Traditional gyms and health magazines would have you believe that core strength is symbolized by a set of six pack abs obtained by doing lots of crunches. Well, that ain't core strength and your abdomen was not intended to crunch. In fact, on the list of useless core exercises, the crunch is right up there with the "sitting on your ass eating pop tarts" exercise.
Your core is made up of a large group of muscles around the midsection and spine. The glutes, erector spinae, transverse abdominus, external and internal obliques, and there's a few others that are really Latin sounding and hard to pronounce.. Those are the ones that give you brute core strength so that you can function at a very high level in athletics and real life in general.. All the power you generate starts at the core and works it's way out through the limbs. An analogy of this is when you throw a rock into the water. You see the largest amount of energy right where the rock hit the water. As the ripples move out farther from the point of impact there is less energy.. If there is less energy produced at the center, then there will be less energy at the extremities. It works the same way with your body. The energy is generated from the midsection and works it's way out through the extremities. The less power you can produce from your core, the less power you will be able to produce period. You do not develop this kind of power isolating the six pack muscles along the front of your abdomen by doing crunches. You develop this kind of power by engaging every muscle in your midsection. One of the most effective tools to do this is the kettlebell. And three of the top kettlebell exercises you can do is the kettlebell swing, the windmill, and the Turkish Getup.
The kettlebell swing is the most fundamental and probably most brutally effective exercise you can do with a kettlebell. It develops phenomenal power from the hips, glutes and hamstrings while engaging every muscle in your upper body to stabilize the weight as you swing it. The windmill is a mixture of a dead lift with a side bend while holding weight in an awkward position above your head. This exercise is also a great mobility exercise for the shoulder as it puts your shoulder through a very wide range of motion under load. People who have done thousands and thousands of useless abdominal crunches will try a windmill for the first time and struggle to perform the exercise with 10 pounds overhead. This is not an exaggeration. One of my favorite ways to do windmills is a double windmill.... Here's a double windmill with 140lbs (95% of my bodyweight).
The Turkish Getup is another exercise that works every muscle in your body and requires a great amount of core strength, stability and mobility in order to perform it properly, especially with heavy weights. Like this one here with a 40kg kettlebell (88lbs)..
Perform these three exercises regularly and you will develop more full body strength than you ever imagined. You will be amazed at your increase in mobility and you will probably find that any nagging lower back pains you might have suffered will disappear..
And since I was having fun with core exercise I threw this one in there as well. I called it a weighted Superman. Very difficult. Before you try this you definitely want to bombproof your core with a lot of power wheel work, windmills, and turkish getups :)
All the best,
kevin
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