Article:  The 3 jobs of the core, the anti-situp routine, or, “go strength not show strength”

Start Date: Sunday, March 26, 2006  End Date: Friday, May 26, 2006 

    “995, 996, 997, 998, 999…..1000!”  How many times have you ever done 1000 crunches or sit ups, it could have been in a row or spaced through out the day.  And you were so satisfied, you thought that you just got the best ab work out and now your abs will be so strong you will be able to stop a punch thrown by the great Ali as if his hand hit a brick wall.  Well what if I told you that all those crunches and sit ups were actually hindering you and holding you back?  What if I then went to tell you that because of those fatigued abs you were sacrificing function?  Then I went on to tell you that those years of traditional ab work that you have done, the countless crunches and sit ups, the hours that would add up to weeks that you wasted doing what you thought was good ab training was worthless in the grand scheme of things and was functionally detrimental? 

Then if that didn’t set you off I smack you in the face with a 30lb flounder.  Hey I figure if you’re not mad or upset after me telling you those earlier remarks I could get away with some wacky shit, I have always wanted to smack someone in the face with a gigantic fish.

            It’s not really your fault that you wasted your time; I blame it more on the people who knew that you were wasting your time and muscle magazines.  The people who knew the correct way to work your abs should have written articles about the right way, they should have attempted some form of education to the masses instead of just sitting back and letting the public at large waste their time and energy.  And the muscle mags should have gone to other sources instead of only going to body builders.

“What’s wrong with traditional ab work”

That is probably a question that is on your mind right now.  There isn’t anything wrong with traditional ab work!  Ok, let me clarify, everything has its place as a tool to make you a better athlete, unfortunately what tends to happen is that those tools get blown out of proportion and used more extensively then how they should be.  I get into arguments all the time with a colleague of mine, he believes that there is still a place for traditional ab work, I disagree. 

His argument is that as we progress from new born to infancy to our first step, traditional ab work is the foundation for core strength.  So if you ever watch a baby they do all kinds of crunches, sit ups, side bends, super mans, v-holds and other ground based ab work to help stretch, strengthen and condition the muscles of the mid section to prepare them selves for upright locomotion.  The toddler progress from lying on his back and stomach, to all four’s, to hands and feet then moving to his knees until finally taking those first steps.  I agree with him on that point of his hypothesis; however the second point is where I disagree, not completely just some what. 

He then goes on to state that as we progress through out life we move away from some of the early stages of abdominal development and that we must revisit them from time to time.  It is because of the body forgetting about the early stages of core strength that people get injuries to their backs, hips, knees and various other joints.  I believe that to truly work the abdominals how they are meant to function, you must work them through out all levels of height and direction, but paying special attention to standing abdominal work.  Traditional ab work actually creates lower back problems by rounding the back due to the over worked and tight rectus abdominus, hip flexors and iliopsoas muscle compared to the under worked back extensors, glutes and hamstrings.  Traditional ab work also adds to posture problems because of the pelvis being pulled anteriorly (think pouring water out of a tea kettle, the tea kettle are your hips) due to the extremely tight abdominal muscles and accompanying musculature.  Not to mention a host of other problems due to imbalances in the body between front and back muscles of the hips and upper legs.  Traditional ab work also goes against what your proprioceptors want to do, and that is to facilitate movement, not limit it.

Proprio-huh?

Proprioceptors are small organs that are through out your entire body, think of them as little internal biological leveling and communicating tools.  These organs tell your body what it is doing, where it is in space and time in relation to other objects and in general help us to perform any kind of activity from menial jobs to complex movements.  If the exercise does not mimic the sport activity or every day real life then the proprioceptors are not being used as they should be.  Take the leg extension for example, you sit on a chair and extend your foot, working your quads.  Your proprioceptors are all out of whack with this movement, they are screaming “what is going on!”. 

When in daily life or any point in life will you be seated on a chair and extend your foot in that way?  Really never, unless your seated and trying to kick some one.  Proprioceptors just like everything else in your body needs and likes to be exercised, thankfully its very easy to work the proprioceptors, simply do exercises standing up and work on your balance! 

So, no more chest press, or ab chair, or smith machine press, traditional equipment does the job that your proprioceptors should be doing.  When your doing a smith squat your proprioceptors don’t have to stabilize or talk to the rest of your body because the frame and pulley system of the machine is doing the work for them.  So your proprioceptors become lazy and forget how to do their job.  Equipment is not bad but to rely on it over standing free weights is a horrible practice.     

The 3 jobs of the abdominals

            The abdominals, from here on out referred to as the core (rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus, external and internal obliques, transverse abdominus, hip flexors, glute medius, glute minimus and the all powerful glute maximus), have 3 main jobs.  They help to stabilize the body and protect the spine, transfer power from the lower body through the upper body and help to accelerate and decelerate the mid section and thus the whole body.  So the question is, does traditional ab work facilitate and train abdominal development as it pertains to the 3 jobs of the abdominals?

            The first job, stabilize the body and protect the spine, is the simplest one to answer.  No, traditional ab work does nothing to help stabilize the body or protect the spine.  Are you going to fall off the floor, or roll over onto your side because you don’t have the strength to keep your back on the ground? I don’t think so.  Ok that topic was pretty simple to answer.  The only exception to ground based ab work stabilizing your spine is with v-holds and planks, which I will get to later.

            The second job of the core is to transfer power from the lower body or the ground by way of the lower body to the upper body and into an object that you are manipulating.  Think throwing a punch, if I’m in a left stance (left foot forward), and I want to throw a right cross, the ball of my right foot drives into the ground to start the generation of force, that force travels up my body through my core into my shoulders and out into what ever I am striking.  The under lying point to this is that in order for my body to transfer power from the ground to an object through my body, my feet must be in contact with the ground in such a way to mimic as close as possible that actual action I seek to enhance, in this case power transfer.  How can traditional ab work, facilitate the development of that particular facet of the abdominals job, if your legs are in a position that does not mimic standing action?  They can’t, simple.          

Onto the last and final job of the abdominals; acceleration and deceleration of the core and body, the most important aspect of core training.  We will go back to the boxing example, suppose a boxer did not have the rotational strength and power in his core to stop his punch and bring his hand back to the defensive or ready position, boxers would be literally throwing themselves all over the ring.  Another example would be football, lets look at a running back who is sprinting down the field toward a defender, as the defender rushes at the running back to make a tackle the running back plants his lead foot, decelerates his body and quickly explodes in a new direction leaving the tackler to pick grass out of his face mask.  With out the core doing its job, that running back would plant his foot and fall flat on his face.  So, does traditional core work facilitate acceleration and deceleration of the body? 

Yes and no, HAH! GOT YOU BY SURPRISE! 

Here’s the catch, to a certain point traditional ab work does work the core through proper acceleration and deceleration of the body, any time you change direction while doing sit ups and its variation you are accelerating and decelerating your body, however, you are no where near the degree of proper direction change that you get when you work your core standing.  After all, the faster you accelerate the faster you have to decelerate, and since the range of motion is so small while on the ground, there is not sufficient space or time to build up a high velocity of movement. 

What about grappling

            In our sport the majority of work is done on the ground, very similar to crunch movements, however most of the work is isometric in nature, i.e. holding your legs up in the bottom position of north and south, sitting up to meet someone when they are in your guard, shrimping your hips away from a person as they are trying to pass your guard, all of those movements mimic traditional ab work. 

“So what your telling us is that we just wasted 10 minutes of our life reading your tirade about traditional core work being counter productive and we should do ab work on the ground!!?”. 

Yes but also no, because you do those movements ALL THE TIME while your rolling there is really no need to supplement extra work besides the few movements that I will recommend in the program.  Remember you have to get the take down or throw in order to even move into grappling, and if your core is weak while standing you will have no power to move your opponent.  To put it simply, you do not have to do  1000’s of crunches and sit ups to get better conditioned at grappling, but rather a few key moves on the ground and standing.  Remember MMA is both a stand up fight and a grapple fest, if the core fatigues while standing because all you do is crunches then the whole body goes.  Both facets of conditioning must be approached, but seeing as how most people already have very strong abs from sit ups and crunches the majority of the abdominal work in the program is standing.

The secret to power

            What kind of exercise article would this be if I didn’t claim to know the secret to true power?  Not a very good one that’s for sure.  So here it is the secret to true core power……back belts, yup if you were a back belt when you do everything you will have such a strong core that you will be able to stop trucks just by striking the classic super man pose, hands on hips. 

Ok, I lied, back belts are horrendous and should be banned from all gyms unless you are going for a max repetition in the squat or dead lift, and really how many times do you see that happen?  The secret to core power is the transverse (rotational) plane, the little known; little worked, most important aspect of core conditioning.

The body moves through 3 directions;

Sagittal Plane – Forward and Backward, normal locomotion.

Frontal Plane – Side to Side, similar to standing with your back against a wall, the only motion you can make is that of a jumping jack.   

Transverse Plane – Rotational, any kicking or punching movement, walking and running are also HUGE transverse plane actions.

Let me sum it up as this; most serious injuries happen in the transverse plane, power can not be generated to peak potential without working through the transverse plane and yet conditioning movements are very rarely ever done through and in this plane.  Most exercises happen in the sagittal plane (bench press, squat, military press, pull ups), some happen in the frontal plane (lateral DB raises, bent over rear flies) and very rarely in the transverse plane (wood choppers or similar to a golf swing motion).  Let’s go back to the boxer analogy, if I want to throw a cross or a hook, I first load up my hips by TWISTING slightly away from the opponent then I TWIST back into them from my ankle to my hip all the way to my hand, then to get my hand back I TWIST my body starting at the ankle to the shoulder back to my stance. 

That’s a lot of twisting I just did and it’s all through the transverse plane!  So, if the transverse plane is as important as I say it is then we must address rotational movement of the core.  The can be done by using bands, med balls, DB’s, plates, KB’s, really anything you can get your hands on.  I personally am a big fan of band training for core work, because, as the length of the band increases the tension increases and as the length of the band shortens it seeks to pull you harder and faster toward the band attachment, thus providing a very good source of deceleration.  As a side note, a lot of injuries happen while the athlete is decelerating his body.  So, the two most common ways that an athlete can injure him self, i.e. in the transverse plane and while decelerating are also the two most under trained aspects of core conditioning. 

Sum it up!

            The core is composed of many muscle groups that work synergistically with each other to; stabilize the body and protect the spine, transfer power from the lower body to the upper body and help to accelerate and decelerate the mid section and thus the whole body.  Traditional abdominal work does not address any of those components or in just a small degree as to be almost useless.  The key to athletic power comes from the transverse plane, so you must work your core and body through that plane to ensure optimal core strength and power.  Most injuries happen while the athlete is decelerating and in the transverse plane, two aspects of conditioning that are often over looked.  To excel at MMA and BJJ, one must work their abdominals in both the traditional way and the functional (standing) way, paying more attention to the functional way because of all the previous years of abdominal training causing serious mechanical and postural defects. 

In part two, I will give exercises to help train your body the proprioceptively correct and functional way.