The Core is the Core

In exercise, core activities establish the musculoskeletal foundation that supports and enables all other components of physical fitness, including strength training, cardiorespiratory exercise, and sports readiness. Core exercise is not new, but the need for core training became lost in the 1980s fitness boom that focused on “aerobics” and “cardio”, and secondarily on strength training.

The importance of core training and the need to learn core exercises has undergone a resurgence recently, as the quantity and frequency of exercise-related injuries have skyrocketed. People eager to make healthier lifestyle choices, including those anxious to lose weight, have bombarded their local fitness centers. But although it seems simple and straightforward to pedal an exercise bike, lope up and down on an elliptical stair-stepper, lift a dumbbell, or press down or pull up on a machine-assisted exercise bar, if the exerciser’s core muscles are deconditioned, injury is the likely result, sooner or later.

The most important core muscle is the transversus abdominis, a sheet of horizontally oriented muscle fibers that lay beneath the more familiar abdominal muscles, that is, the rectus abdominis, internal obliques, and external obliques. Core muscles include the mutifidi and rotatores, small, deep spinal muscles that connect and help move pairs and groups of spinal vertebras, and other back muscles such as the erector spinae and longissimus thoracis. Everyone needs to train the core as a primary component of an ongoing program of regular, vigorous exercise. There are innumerable highly effective core exercises and most do not require any equipment. A physioball provides the opportunity for variety and increasing levels of difficulty. As with all forms of exercise, start slow and build strength and endurance gradually. It doesn’t take long to notice the benefits of a regular core routine, including enhanced spinal flexibility, improved balance, and a flatter abdominal region.

Just as long-term core strength starts with training the transversus abdominis, long-term health and well-being start with regular chiropractic care. In order for us to manifest ongoing good health, it’s very important that all our physiological systems are working in harmony. Such seamless integration of activity is managed and maintained by the nerve system, our body’s master system. The nerve system, that is, the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves, transmit information to and receive information from the rest of the body. But nerve interference and nerve irritation can delay and distort the information stream, resulting in errors in cell function. Such errors may expand and cause errors in the functioning of organs and organ systems, resulting in symptoms and disease.

Regular chiropractic care detects, analyzes, and corrects spinal misalignments, the cause of nerve interference and irritation. By restoring spinal biomechanical function, regular chiropractic care helps ensure a free flow of information between the nerve system and the body’s other systems, including the cardiorespiratory, digestive, and endocrine systems. In this way, regular chiropractic care helps ensure long-term health and well-being for your family members and you.