Each month we chose 1 concept to focus on at the gym to help organize our thoughts and help each member understand a small piece of the larger story of movement and fitness. The focus for June 2014 is the core.
My initial thoughts about building core strength hinged around doing movement like crunches, situps, leg lifts, etc. I focused on hitting these movements as often as possible. What I found was that I got good at those individual movements, but in general didn’t notice a difference in anything else. The problem with most of these ab specific movements is that they are meant to move the pelvis closer to the chest. Generally speaking this doesn’t seem that useful. Call it a guess but I don’t think athletes like Rich Froning and Sam Briggs are doing 1000 crunches a day.
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Since attending the CrossFit Level 1 and subsequent certs, I’ve come to realize what core strength really means. The key phrase used during each one of these certs is “midline stabilization”. Midline stabilization is one of the magic pieces in the movements that we perform on a daily basis. The obvious visual for this would be in the Overhead Squat (OHS). With a weight extended fully overhead, perform a squat. The hardest part of the OHS is keeping the seemingly small amount of weight from crashing down to the ground. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of the key pieces is to keep those core muscles locked in to give the weight a solid foundation. The abs and back keep the weight from moving front to back and left or right.
Each and every movement that we use in our programming requires a level of midline stabilization and core control. With this month’s focus, you will see plenty of movements that will blast your midsection. BUT you will also hear the CrossFit Banshee coaches honing in on keeping your core tight, or keeping that midsection (midline) rock solid stable.
In addition to focusing on each movement additional drills and exercises will be used to hammer the point home. In this way we can keep things fresh and challenge each of our amazing members in new and fun ways.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
