First we have to define the core. The core covers all of the muscles around your midsection. The upper and lower abs, the oblique muscles on the side of the abdominal area, and the muscles in your lower and middle back.
It’s hard to stress enough the importance of the core exercises in improving almost everything you do. One of the most common chronic problems that many people live with is lower back pain. One of the main reasons for lower back pain is the lack of doing core exercises. The core muscles hold up your entire upper body, and they stabilize your whole body. The core muscles help transfer power from your lower body to your upper body, and visa versa. The core muscles also play an important part in protecting your internal organs.
Two good examples of how important doing core exercises are in athletics. When you take a golf swing, you twist your body in your back swing, as you un twist your body to hit the ball, all of the power in your legs is transferred to your arms through the core and to the ball. A strong core will give you extra yards on your drives. The second example is a baseball pitcher, when he gets ready to pitch, he brings up his leg, and uses the momentum of the leg to pull the power from the lower body and twists the core to transfer the power to the arm, and to the ball.
You can see that most sports and most things that you do in every day life, require the use of strong core muscles done with core exercises to transfer the power and force to the point you want the power. The balance for throwing a ball, running, turning when running, jumping with balance and control snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding are all controlled by a strong core.
There are hundreds of machines and gimmicks out there that promise great abs in only 7 or 10 minutes. Don’t fall for the hype. To get a strong core, just like anything else it takes work. The good thing is you don’t need expensive machines.
Work your upper abs doing crunches on an exercise ball. Work your lower abs by doing leg raises. Work the oblique muscles with weighted side bends. Work the lower back with hyperextensions. If you do these 4 simple exercises 3 days a week, you will build a strong core that will improve you performance in almost everything that you do. Look at this for an in depth explanation of core exercises.
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