What is Core Training?

Series Summary

Many people want to lose weight, and despite claims for quick fat burning pills and powders, the best way to lose weight is still through proper diet and exercise. Exercise does more than just maintain physical fitness though. Working out can also help build healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility. It can also reduce your general health risks, boost the immune system, and help with depression and insomnia. Whether your reason for exercising is to lose weight, or improve muscle mass, working out is always a good idea to help promote the health of your body and mind.

When it comes to physical fitness training, one of the most important and popular areas for exercise fiends to attack is the core muscles. For the most part, the core muscles are the abdominal and back muscles, and keeping these core muscles strong is key to maintaining one's physical health. In this free video series, our expert will show you a number of core exercises to strengthen the core muscles, from single and double leg movements to exercises utilizing a foam roll or physioball. With these exercises, strengthening the core will become easier, and you'll avoid injury at the same time. Forget about back pain or muscle fatigue, and strengthen your core!

Video Transcript

"KIRK VICKERS: Today, we're going to be talking about core strengthening and core training. I think there's a lot of misinformation about the core. Many people think that core training is just about abdominal strengthening. I believe it encompasses much more. When we think of the core and we talk about the core, we're looking at the musculature from the midthigh all the way to the lower ribcage and then we're looking 360 degrees all the way around the body. Some of the muscles that are involved within the core are the upper quadriceps, the hamstrings, the big muscles in the back of the body, the glute muscles, the big muscles here, the abdominals. And then, if we really want to get technical with this, we can even go deeper. The abdominal cavity and the abdominal region has three to four layers deep of musculature. The transverse abdominis, the obliques and even some deep muscles that attach right to the spine that I think are important--the multifidus, the short and long rotators and some--even muscles like the interossei, not the muscles that we always talk about--but I think they're important for developing strength within this midsection of the body. So today, we're going to give you some ideas on how to specifically strengthen this area."